


The Bat of the East End

by VigilantSycamore



Series: The Batman Saga [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batman fighting drug dealers, Batman living in the East End, Batman: Year One, Complete, John Blake is a different character here, Not sure how graphic, Year One Influenced, rated m to be safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-01-18 06:26:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12382737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantSycamore/pseuds/VigilantSycamore
Summary: Gotham City is one of the most crime-ridden cities in America. Corruption permeates every level of its infrastructure.But not everybody is willing to allow the city to fall to lawlessness and injustice. Some stand up for what they still know is right. And from the shadows of the alleys, an urban legend strikes against those who prey on Gotham's people.... Pardon the purple prose.





	1. Chapter One

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five years ago**

_“Take down Ferreiro?”_ Gael was astonished that his friend would even suggest such a venture. _“Are you crazy!? He’s invincible!”_

 _“But is he?”_ Bruce replied. _“Just because nobody’s beaten him yet, doesn’t mean nobody can. And even if we fail, we have to try. You’ve seen what he’s doing to the favelas, and since the police don’t care it’s up to us to do something.”_ Bruce had been like that ever since he’d arrived: always the unyielding, hopeful idealist. Not that people called him that often, ‘ _teimoso_ ’ and ‘ _ingênuo_ ’ were much more common descriptors.

 _“And how,”_ Jacqueline said as she suddenly appeared behind the two, _“do you plan to do that? Do you know of anyone who’s ever managed to even get close to beating him?”_

 _“No. But I know of someone who escaped his purge of the gangs.”_ There was no doubt who Bruce was referring to: everyone in the neighbourhood knew the story of Jacqueline Maestre, the elderly blind woman who escaped Ferreiro’s assassins all those years ago. _“Which means he’s not as unbeatable as he’d like to be. He can fail, and that means he’s vulnerable. So the question is ‘how did you do it?’”_

_“You want to know how I did it? I had help, boy. And that’s something you will not have. Things have changed since then. Ferreiro has a reputation now, and people are scared to defy him. They are not going to go along with whatever fools’ errand you have planned for them.”_

Bruce hesitated for a few seconds, turning away in deep thought before turning to face his mentor and his friend again. _“Then that’s how we beat him. Ferreiro feeds on fear? It’s time for him to starve.”_

**The East End, Gotham City, USA**

**The Present Day**

Gotham was infamous for many things. Its rampant crime and corruption, the seemingly hopeless infrastructure… among such problems, the weather seems insignificant. But to people living in Gotham, who consider muggers and drug dealers operating in broad daylight to be normal, the miserable weather gave them something to complain about that might one day change for the better. Not that it often did.

Today was another day of horrible weather. The overcast sky threatened to send rain pouring down - an empty threat, but it still created a miserable atmosphere that inspired many a poet to write an ode to the gloom and misery of romanticism. But as John Blake sat on the fire escape and stared at the sky, he wasn’t thinking about what such weather would signify in a play or a poem. His thoughts were more along the lines of ‘how much longer do I have to wait for him to show up this time?’

“Blake.” As always, the deep and rough voice seemed to come out of nowhere. And as always, John nearly jumped out of his skin upon hearing it. He composed himself before looking towards the roof across the alley and speaking.

“Took you long enough.”

The man John was speaking to descended the ladder until they were at the same height, then shrugged apologetically. “I had to make a detour. There was a mugging a few blocks from here.” To say he was a strange man was an understatement: for starters, he was wearing a light-and-dark grey outfit (reasonable enough, the colour scheme provides good camouflage in an urban area) which included a cape and cowl clearly designed to resemble a giant bat - the flying mammal, not the stick. The black metal badge on his chest was also shaped like a bat. That was the strangest thing about him, though not as strange as his primary pastime: a decidedly un-vigilante-like form of vigilantism. “I convinced one of them to return the money without any trouble, but the other one has a sprained wrist now.”

“They were probably just trying to feed their families, you know.”

“So was their victim.” The man in the bat costume decided to change the subject. “What have you managed to find out about the drugs?”

“The dealer on Moldoff Street is a guy calling himself Lotus. Bald, drives a real tacky van that’s painted green and yellow. He’s one of a dozen dealers in the East End working for that Milo guy.” Milo was the newest drug lord in the East End and the one John was helping the man in the bat costume take down. “They don’t have to worry about the cops, because Narc Unit are lining their pockets with Milo’s profits.”

“Thanks.” The costumed man started climbing up the ladder, then stopped. “How’s your family, by the way?”

John smiled. “We’re doing better. That Thompkins lady you told me about really helped us.” Thanks to her, John still had his little sister. And now he also had a job and they didn’t have to steal medicine.

“I’m glad,” the vigilante said. And then he was gone.

/\\-^|^-/\

The East End was a neighbourhood with an interesting history. And by interesting, one means full of crime, poverty and just a dash of bigotry. The area was first built in the 19th Century by wealthy industrialists who wanted to put all the new employees arriving in the city somewhere other than the already full ‘Industrial Quarter’ and decided to just buy the land the Quarter was already spilling over into. The construction of the East End was supported by self-proclaimed patriots who were unhappy about all the Irishmen and Italians and other assorted Europeans, later joined by Asians and Latin Americans, arriving in the great land of the free.

The result was a melting pot constructed with little concern for human rights. On the plus side, the cultural diversity meant that artists had been coming out of the East End for a long time, from Alan Morrison to Isaac Crowe. Unfortunately, the rampant poverty meant that high crime rates were common. This has always been the constant to life in the East End and most would call it insanity to try to change that constant.

‘Most’ being the key word.

The masked vigilante first spoken of in the Narrows and recently seen increasingly often in the East End strongly disagreed. He had made it his life’s mission to change such constants, and he wasn’t about to stop now. Not when the next step of his crusade was just a few blocks away.

/\\-^|^-/\

A van had just pulled up on the corner of Moldoff Street, where a group of teenagers - four boys and two girls - had gathered. They recognised the vehicle - not many cars were had that much kitsch or were that tacky - and approached.

"‘Sup, Lotus," one of the teens said as he swaggered forwards. “We know what you’re selling and we got the dough.”

The bald man driving the van rolled down the window and grinned. He opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Well, in that case, what would you like? I’ve got every drug you can think of today: LSD, crack, venom…”Lotus grinned. “Well, in that case, what would you like? I’ve got every drug you can think of today: LSD, crack, venom…”

“Jojo, you sure about this?” the youngest boy asked. “My momma always told me-”

“Shut up, Ray!” the other teens snarled.

Jojo continued talking to the dealer. “We don’t _want_ any of that venom crap, Lotus. Or crack. Just acid.”

“You sure? They’re both quite a trip. Don’t you want to try just a bit?”

Jojo seemed to consider this. He didn’t get a chance to answer though, since before he could answer another voice spoke. “If I was you, I’d think about what I’m doing.” The voice had come from a nearby alley.

“Who the hell are you?” Jojo yelled.

A man stepped out of the shadows. He was tall and wearing a grey bat costume - a _cape and cowl_ for crying out loud - that almost seemed to blend into the concrete and granite buildings. “Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters is that right now all of you,” the bat man looked towards the group of teens, “have a choice in front of you. You can either take the drugs - you’ll be losing money, getting hooked if you aren’t already, you’ll turn to crime to pay for more drugs and you’ll lose any chances you have at a decent life. That’s not even considering the fact that you’re not in control of your actions when you’re high. Do you really want to take that risk?” He had started walking towards them. “Or you can refuse. You can stay away from drugs. And I don’t know if any of you are already addicted, but if you are then I can help you: there’s a clinic not far from Crime Alley. It’s run by a woman called Leslie Thompkins. If you talk to her, she can put you in touch with any number of support groups. And you don’t have to take risks just you think people will like you better if you do.”

“You can’t tell us what to do, jackass!” one of the girls shouted. “This isn’t some PSA where you give us a lecture and we just go along with it!” But aside from her and Jojo, most of the teens were hesitating.

“You’re right, it’s not. That’s why I’m not trying to tell you what to do. I’m just making sure you know all your options.” By now, the costumed man had stopped next to the van. Despite the two leaders’ protests, most of the teens were walking away now.

That was when Lotus decided he wasn’t going to take chances by staying around any longer and scrambled into the driver’s seat… only to find himself being yanked out by a gloved hand, the bat-costumed vigilante flipping him over his shoulder. Lotus landed on the ground facing upwards. He scrambled to get up and found himself being pushed against the side of his own van. The costumed man pressed his elbow into Lotus’ back, pinning him in place.

The remaining teens had witnessed this and decided that they were better of leaving. Ray, who had stayed behind this long out of curiosity, started to walk away but stopped when he heard the costumed man call his name.

“You’re a smart kid. I hope you don’t forget that.”

“Thanks mister. Who are you anyway?”

“Just somebody who wants to make things better here. See you around, kid.”

Once Ray was gone, the man in the costume turned to Lotus again. “Now.” He growled. “Let’s have a talk, shall we?”

/\\-^|^-/\

Lotus’ van pulled up outside of the police station in the Narrows. When Lotus, dragged out of the back by the bat vigilante, saw this he panicked.

“No man, you can’t take me to the cops! Milo will find out I talked and he’ll have them kill me! Please, I’m begging you-”

“Lotus, this is the Skeleton Crew. Do you know what makes them different from the rest of the GCPD?”

Lotus made a squeak that sounded like the word ‘no’.

“Let me explain. The Skeleton Crew works in the Narrows. There are three types of cop on this crew: the heroic crusaders who volunteer to work in the roughest part of town (they might rough you up a bit, but they won’t kill you), the slovenly and lackadaisical cynics who don’t really care anymore, and the genuinely good cops who have been assigned here as a punishment. You don’t have to worry about anything from the Skeleton Crew, none of them are going to be on Milo’s payroll.”

“Oh, thank you man! Thank you so much!”

“Shut up. Here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to turn yourself in, and you’ll tell them exactly what you told me. If you don’t, I’ll come after you. Understand?”

“Y-yeah.” Lotus walked up to the door of the station, then turned around. “Hey, wh-”

The masked man was already gone.

/\\-^|^-/\

“So who’s this guy?” Bullock asked Gordon.

“Says his name is Lotus - according to his license, his real name is Bill Sheldon - and he’s a drug dealer in the East End. His van’s outside, and has everything from crack to venom, so he’s probably telling the truth.”

“The East End? What the hell’s he doing here?”

“I asked him that. He told me that a guy dressed as a bat roughed him up when he tried to sell drugs to some kids on Moldoff Street, then the bat guy shoved him into the van and drove it up here.”

Bullock groaned. “ _Our_ bat guy?” They’d never actually seen him, but the stories of a man in a bat costume beating up thugs in the Narrows spread quickly. None of the cops on the Skeleton Crew liked him: either he was just another criminal, which pissed off the crusaders; or he was doing the crew’s job better than them, which made the cynics look bad; or he was going outside the law, which rubbed the good cops up the wrong way. “Why does he insist on making this stuff our problem?”

Gordon shrugged. “I’m more interested in why he’d turn the guy over to the cops at all. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a vigilante would do.”

Bullock knew where this was going. “And let me guess: Lotus told you where his boss is going to be and you want to take him down even though _it’s not our job, Jim!_ _It’s not our job!_ ”

Gordon was infamous in the GCPD for his stubbornness. “We’re cops. Catching criminals _is_ our job and you know Flass doesn’t care about busting drug dealers.”

“I can’t talk you out of this can I?” Gordon shook his head in response and Bullock sighed. “Fine. What did he tell you?”

“He works for a guy named Achilles Milo. Milo runs the East End these days and he’s got all his dealers coming to a warehouse near the Docklands, where he’s keeping the latest batch of drugs. We bust Milo and his dealers there, we’ll be taking down the drug lord of the East End.”

“If Milo’s a drug lord, he’s gonna have pull with Flass. How are we supposed to deal with that, Jim?”

Bullock had a point. The corruption in the GCPD would make it almost impossible to put a drug lord behind bars. Unless… “Vale.” Gordon snapped his fingers. “We get Vale on the scene. She’ll write an article on the bust and the evidence we’ll find there, then Loeb won’t risk the bad press the GCPD would get if Flass had the evidence disappear.”

“It’s a long shot, Jim. Which means you’re gonna take it, doesn’t it?” Bullock said, resigned to Gordon’s determination in the face of an entire police force on the take.

/\\-^|^-/\

The East End was adjacent to three other well-known neighbourhoods of Gotham. Hell’s Cradle, which had tended to receive the brunt of whatever damage the city was facing; Agga, a neighbourhood known for having a high African-American population; the Industrial Quarter, so named because much of the construction occurred thanks to the factory owners of the Industrial Revolution - since manufacturing jobs moved overseas, the area had rapidly deteriorated; the Amusement Mile - with its once-thriving theatres, cinemas and theme parks, now a cruel reminder of Gotham’s condition; the Narrows, the result of an ambitious but poorly thought out land reclamation scheme; and the Docklands (which once contained the land that eventually became the Narrows) - during the industrial golden age of Gotham, a prosperous area where ships unloaded imported goods and took on the city’s exports. Once again, the changing situation in secondary industries hit an area of Gotham’s industrial area hard.

That night, at a warehouse where the East End met the Docklands, almost a dozen drug dealers gathered, summoned by their boss: Professor Achilles Milo. The eleven dealers were diverse: four were white, three were black, another three were Latino. 5 of them were men, and 6 were women.

Maria Janna - diminutive but, thanks to her flaming skeleton tattoos and toned muscles, intimidating - was the first to speak. “Man, where the hell is Lotus?”

“Probably holding up a Big Belly Burger cause he sampled the product again.” Diamond, a paper-thin man from Agga, laughed.

“Who cares!?” Gabrielle, pale-skinned and short-tempered, snapped. “If he ****ed up again, **** him!”

Just as an argument was about to break out, a rat-faced man with a haircut that can only be described as a failed attempt at a hair helmet walked into the room. Despite his comical appearance, his confident strides exuded authority. “Now, now. Gabrielle has a point. We have more pressing matters at hand than the disappearance of one of our more mediocre members. I need my cut of your sales,” Milo’s cut was always the price of each dealer’s batch and 10% of the profits they made from it, “and you need the next batch of… product.” He chuckled at his euphemism.

Then the lights went out with a smash of glass.

Milo did the reasonable thing and started running towards where he remembered the doors being, but just as his hands felt metal, he was knocked down by a blow to his temple.

While Milo was making a dash for the exit, the dealers had pulled out their guns and filled the dark with bullets. The flashes from the gunshots revealed a figure clad in the grey visage of a bat. In the time it took the dealers to react, the figure had reached them and one by one they fell to the ground with a grunt of pain.

One discarded his gun and tried to punch the figure, only for his fist to be caught in an iron grip and twisted painfully, forcing him to his knees and his face into the path of a kick.

Another sprayed a hail of bullets in the figure’s direction, but the figure leapt to safety. When she tried to reload, the figure tackled her to the ground.

While grappling with a third dealer, the figure was shot at by a fourth. The bullet missed, going through the third dealer’s knee and letting the figure move on to the shooter with an uppercut and a right hook.

Diamond, a pistol in each hand, screamed when the figure twisted the guns while Diamond’s thumbs were still in the trigger guard. It was a relief when three blows to the head in quick succession knocked Diamond out.

Gabrielle managed to shoot the figure, aiming for a black symbol on his chest, which stood out from the grey costume and made for an easier target. The figure stumbled, but then regained balance and struck out with a fist. The blow didn’t knock Gabrielle out, but it did stun her long enough for the bat to judo flip her, which seemed to her to be what happened before she struck the ground and lost consciousness.

Maria Janna was actually somewhat successful, rushing the figure and getting in a few strategically placed blows. At least until the figure leapt into the shadows and somehow reappeared behind her, putting her in a choke hold until she passed out.

The last two drug dealers tried to attack the figure at once, but the figure simply ducked, causing them to hit each other. Then they were both punched in the diaphragm and incapacitated long enough for the figure to knock them out individually with a series of jabs to their temples.

When the police arrived, knocked down the door and ran into the warehouse, they found Milo and the dealers immobilised with zip ties in the middle of the warehouse, surrounded by bags and boxes which, when opened, were found to contain a sizeable amount of illegal drugs.

/\\-^|^-/\

A few days later, in a one-room apartment in the East End, a man whose skin was a tapestry of scars was listening to the radio while bench pressing 100 pounds (45 kilograms). He wasn’t interested in what songs the stations might be playing, just the news they reported. Specifically the news concerning his work.

“…promotions for members of the Skeleton Crew. Sources report that the GCPD allegedly received aid in apprehending Milo and his drug dealers from a vigilante dressed as a bat, but the GCPD deny these rumours. Is there a bat vigilante hunting the criminals of Gotham? Let’s hear your thoughts.”

The broadcast continued as recordings of various people calling the station to give their opinions on the story were played. The scarred man hadn’t expected the cops to bring a reporter along, but the publicity could be useful. He _had_ been trying to build up a reputation after all. He finished with the weights and took a TV dinner out of the freezer, placing it in the microwave. Of more pressing concern was what Lotus had told him about Milo’s sponsors. Going after them seemed like the logical next step, but first he’d have to find out more about this Red Hood Gang…

There was a knock on the door. The man slipped on a shirt and was about to put on a blond wig and a pair of dark glasses to cover his dark hair and blue eyes, when the person on the other side of the door spoke.

“Bruce. I know you’re there, so don’t bother disguising yourself and open the bloody door.”

Well. This was… not necessarily an unexpected development, but certainly a development. Bruce forsook the disguise and opened the door. “Hello Alfred. It’s been a long time.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five years ago**

Two youths - a Brazilian and a foreigner - made their way through the narrow roads of the favela, towards a house near the top of the hillside.

“ _Gael, who is this Maestre anyway?_ ” the foreigner asked.

Gael laughed. _“Questions like that are how people can tell you’re not from here. Everybody’s heard of Jacqueline Maestre, Bruce. She was the only person to escape Ferreiro’s purge of the gangs a dozen years ago._ ”

Bruce considered this. If Gael was telling the truth - and he had given Bruce no reason to believe he wouldn’t - then he could understand how skilled Maestre must be. If he wanted to continue his training while he was in Rio, she was the best person to go to.

They’d finally reached the house, made from unjoined stones held in place by wooden shafts in the ground. The roof was made of sheets of corrugated metal and in place of a door was a plastic curtain. Gael shifted the curtain aside.

“ _Jacqueline? I’m here with an American. He wants you to teach him._ ”

A scornful laugh came from inside the house. “ _Send him in_.”

Bruce took in the inside of the house as he stepped in. It was only one room, mostly bare except for a basket with clothes inside in one corner and the charcoal left from a fire in a hole dug directly underneath a gap in the roof. There was an old mattress by the wall on the far side of the room. In the centre of the room, an elderly woman sat cross-legged on the ground, facing away. Bruce stepped towards her.

“ _Don’t come any closer, boy.”_ As Maestre turned around, Bruce saw that she was wearing dark glasses despite the lack of light. Between that, the lack of any attempt at decoration and the fact that the chaotic colours of her clothes - green floral-patterned leggings, a bright yellow button-up shirt, a red bandana and a purple vest - he wondered if she was blind. Of course, there was a number of other possible explanations. To know for sure, he’d have to see how her eyes reacted to light.

She approached him. “ _Who are you?_ ”

“ _I am Bruce Wayne, from Gotham City._ ” He started to reach for his wallet: if she asked him to pay her, he could easily meet her demands.

Maestre frowned. “ _I didn’t ask your name or where you were from. I asked who you were. I can tell you’re wealthy, you’re already reaching for your wallet, prepared to pay any price you expect me to ask. Your pulse tells me you’re impatient, unable to wait. Your voice when you told me your name let me know that you’re considered famous in America, and that you were dreading being pitied for something - perhaps a tragedy in your past? But that’s not who you are. And you don’t know either, do you?”_

Bruce was baffled. “ _How could you have learnt so much about me in a few seconds?”_

Maestre scoffed. “ _Are you surprised that a blind woman can see so much? I was lucky: my blindness is not the same as another person’s would be. When God took my sight, he blessed my other senses. In some ways, I can see more than if my eyes still worked. But you didn’t answer my question._ ”

Bruce felt himself getting frustrated. “ _I didn’t come here for a psychological evaluation. I came here because I was told you could train me: that you could teach me to fight._ ”

“ _And I will,_ ” said Maestre. “ _But there is a price you must pay first._ ”

Now they were getting somewhere. Bruce took out his wallet. “ _How much do you want?_ ”

But Maestre just shook her head. “ _I don’t need or want your money. If I’m going to teach you, you have to answer my question. Who are you, Bruce Wayne of Gotham?”_

The answer came a few days later. Bruce had spent most of that time in the favela, watching people go about their lives as he contemplated his. There was no grand moment of revelation, he just realized that he’d already found the answer to Maestre’s question after a thinking about it long enough. Bruce walked to the house by himself and stepped through the curtain.

And had to duck to avoid getting struck in the face with a stick.

_“You should learn to knock.”_ Maestre said.

_“Apologies. I have the answer to your question.”_

_“Go ahead then. Who are you?”_

_“I am a man on a mission against injustice, who doesn’t know what that mission is.”_

_“Pretentious. But it will do. Let’s begin.”_

**The East End, Gotham City, USA**

**Present Day**

“Hello Alfred. It’s been a long time.”

“You’re damn right! Five bloody years since you disappeared,” the grey-haired British man barged into Bruce’s apartment, “and when you do drag your sorry arse back here, you don’t even call! If I hadn’t checked the Vault last month to find it empty and then hadn’t paid attention to the rumors coming out of here and the Narrows, I wouldn’t even know you were back! When exactly were you going to tell me?” Alfred stopped his rant when his eyes fell on the TV Dinner in the microwave. “Have you been bloody poisoning yourself this whole time!?”

Bruce closed the door and stepped towards Alfred, who was now in the middle of the room. “Alfred, I was going to tell you. But I knew that when I did, you’d want me to bring Bruce Wayne back from the dead, and the time isn’t right for that. Bruce Wayne can’t do anything for Gotham right now. People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy.”

“And what’s more dramatic than the prodigal son returning to Gotham? Not from the dead, mind you, since you were never declared dead.”

That was shocking. “I was gone five years, Alfred.”

“Not long enough to declare you dead. Not in my book.”

Bruce changed the subject while Alfred’s response sank in. “Bruce Wayne is just a man, no matter how much of a pity case the impulsive and hedonistic billionaire orphan _is_ to Gotham’s elite. If I try to change things as Bruce Wayne right now, it won’t be long before someone has me killed, or tries to destroy whatever I build. The dramatic example I’m talking about has to be an urban legend. A hero.”

“A bloody vigilante, you mean.” Alfred walked up to the set of drawers by the window, curtains drawn, and opened the top drawer to reveal the bat costume. “I see you took my advice about camouflage and keeping your mouth uncovered so you can breathe easily. Bulletproof or stab-proof?”

“Bulletproof, most of the time. I have stab-proof armour too, in case I know that will be the more likely threat.”

“And the whole bat theme makes you distinctive. The ears are too big, it’s too easy to grab onto them in a fight. And the cape is another risk.”

“The cape disguises my silhouette and I can use it as a weapon if I need to. As for the ears… I’ll make them shorter on the next suit.”

Alfred seemed to accept this. “So, is this where you keep all your equipment?”

Bruce shook his head. “Most of it is in a bunker hidden in the tunnel system under the East End, just like the Vault. I’ve converted it into a basic forensic lab and a workshop for making new devices.”

“And what’s your plan? You’re making quite a name for yourself taking down drug lords: Sawshark in the Narrows, Milo in the East End… who are you taking on next?”

“Actually, when I interrogated Lotus - one of Milo’s dealers - he told me that Milo got a lot of help from the Red Hood Gang. He thought they might have had a deal: Milo paid them tribute and they let him control the East End. With Milo behind bars, the Red Hoods are my next target. I’m going to gather intel on them, then infiltrate their ranks and hopefully I’ll be able to take them down from the inside.”

Alfred nodded. “Right. How do I help?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well obviously you need me around, you’re living on bloody microwaved food! So how do I help?”

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon, Bullock, Montoya, Yin and Bennet were sitting around a table at a busy bar. They were discussing the events following the apprehension of Achilles Milo.

“The reporter could be a problem,” Ellen Yin pointed out. “We don’t want people finding out the GCPD is getting help from a guy in a bat costume, which we all know is how the media will spin it if they find out more about this guy.”

“Vale’s not our main concern right now,” Gordon said. “The Red Hood Gang is. Lotus told me that Milo was paying them to stay out of the East End. Milo confirmed it. With Milo out of the way, the Red Hoods are going to move into the East End and Flass isn’t going to stop them.”

“At least they’ll make sure Milo stays behind bars,” Bullock pointed out while drinking his third bottle of beer.

“So how do _we_ take them down?” Montoya asked Gordon.

“We need to get someone on the inside. We gather intel, and then we make our move.”

Bennet spoke up. “I’ll do it.” Gordon pushed up his glasses and raised an eyebrow, so Bennet elaborated. “I was on Narc Unit before I got transferred. I have experience with groups like the Red Hoods.”

“So it’s settled,” said Gordon. “You’re our man on the inside. We’ll figure out how we can communicate without being noticed, then you’ll go undercover.”

Bullock faked cheerfulness. “Whoopee! Then we’ll get more good press, more promotions and more responsibility! I’m being sarcastic by the way!” He paused and looked down the neck of his bottle in disappointment. “Waiter! Another drink!”

/\\-^|^-/\

Alfred had finished setting up the device Bruce had built and turned on the camera while muttering to himself. “Asked him what I can do to help… lad’s got me wandering around in a glorified bloody sewer setting up an ultrasound emitter to see if the bats show up like he trained them to…” Once the camera was on, he climbed up the ladder, looked out the slit in the kerb to check there was nobody nearby, lifted the hinged paving tile and climbed out into the alley above, dusting himself off once he was on the surface.

/\\-^|^-/\

There were many establishments in Gotham frequented by the criminal classes. The Iceberg Lounge and Casino was one such establishment. A blues band provided the music for the well-dressed patrons conversing at various tables, or playing blackjack, poker or roulette.

A blonde man with a moustache and a white suit strode in through the pine wood door and took a seat at the bar. The bartender, a dark-skinned woman, introduced herself as Candy and asked him what he’ll be having.

“Somethin’ classy, but cheap.” The man had a Jersey accent. “Preferably a bourbon.”

Candy poured him a mug of the Iceberg’s preferred brand of bourbon and the man paid for his drink.

“I heard this is the place to go for someone looking for a job of… dubious legality,” he said.

“And you’re that someone?” Candy guessed. “What area of crime are you looking at?”

“I have experience getting items of value where people want them to be, but the law doesn’t.”

“Trafficking, huh? What’s your poison? Guns, human,” the man looked offended at that one, “or drugs?”

“The first and third. I draw a line at the second.”

“Good. You’ll live longer that way; Gotham has issues, but we have standards too.” And Falcone had vowed to kill anyone he caught trafficking people when he’d become the emperor of the Gotham mafia. “If you’re going into arms trafficking, you want a job with the Russians. Knyazev controls the gun supply in an out of Gotham. But I’d point you towards narcotics: the Red Hoods are planning to get settled in the East End and they’ve started recruiting henchmen.”

“Sorry, I’m from out of town. The Red Hoods?”

“You remember how Gotham made national news last year because of that gang war between the Irish mobs and the Cartels?” The man nodded. “Well after Tetch and Crane got sent to the slammer, the remaining leaders of their respective organizations pooled their resources and set up the Red Hood Gang. There’ve been some regime changes since then, but the Hoods still control most of the narcotics business in Gotham. So if you want a job trafficking narcotics, they’re the ones you should go to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for the advice, Candy.”

“What’s your name anyway?”

“The name’s Malone. People call me Matches, I let them.”

/\\-^|^-/\

A fortnight later, a man whose face was covered by a crimson helmet met with a man in a GCPD uniform in an alleyway in the East End. The masked man was the first to speak.

“Flass. I’m guessing you have news for me?”

The muscular cop replied “Yeah, but it’s gonna cost ya.”

The masked man handed over a wad of hundred dollar bills. Flass grinned.

“I had one of my people follow that idiot Gordon around for a while. Turns out, he’s put a mole in your ranks, Napier.” Flass handed Napier a photograph. “His name’s Ethan Bennet. Used to work for me, before I had him transferred for making trouble.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Napier said. “I’m glad to keep this arrangement with you going, Flass.”

Napier left first.

/\\-^|^-/\

Alfred and Bruce were sitting at the small table in Bruce’s apartment, discussing the results of the device test and the information Bruce had gathered as Matches Malone.

“You were right,” said Alfred. “The bats flock to that thing you built like gulls, and the tagged ones are from all over the tunnels. It will definitely come in handy if you need to make an impression.”

“I’ll have to make it smaller, though, if I want to be able to carry it around with me and not just in my car,” Bruce replied.

“You built a working engine when you were nine. Somehow. I think you can manage making a lighter music box.”

“It’s an ultrasound emitter.”

“It makes a specific noise when you turn it on. The fact that the bats can hear it but we can’t changes nothing: you built a music box to summon bats.”

“I did not build a music box.”

“Yes you did. What about the Red Hoods?”

“The guy leading operations in the East End is called Napier. He’s calling a meeting at Gearhead Motors in two days. Gearhead seems to be the main vehicle provider, so I’m guessing he’s preparing to transport a new shipment around the city.”

“Let me guess: you attend the meeting, I sneak into the parking lot, knock out the guards, drag them to safety and slash the tires on the trucks, so the Red Hoods can’t use them to get away or take the drugs anywhere. What if you get made?”

Bruce opened a drawer and pulled out several pieces of equipment. “This,” he picked up a bulky wristwatch, “contains a radio transmitter. See the knob on the side? I pull that, turn it, then push it back in, and it will send an SOS to this,” he handed Alfred what looked like a simplistic pager, “receiver. Then you’ll get near one of the windows and through this,” he picked up a canister, “through it. It’s a smoke bomb I built; I can manage without sight but everyone else’s visibility will be compromised. I’d rather be able to salvage the Matches Malone identity somehow, so it would be better to have the other guy show up too. Once you’ve thrown the smoke bomb, drop in the suit. I’ll get to it and put it on, then the bat will fight off the Hoods.”

“Right then. We’ve got a plan, time for the execution.”

/\\-^|^-/\

At the Gotham Gazette, two reporters stood in front of a board with various bat-vigilante-related materials pinned to it - transcripts of interviews with people who claimed to have encountered the bat, a map of all the reported bat sightings, sketches of the vigilante based on various descriptions, that kind of thing.

“We’re going to need a name,” said one, a red-headed woman. “If we run this article, we have to settle on something to call him.”

Her companion, a man with curly dark hair, had a few suggestions ready. “The Man in the Bat Costume.”

“Too long.”

“The Devil of Gotham.”

“He’s a bat, not a devil.”

“The Bat of the East End.”

“…that one’s actually good. And we can shorten it to ‘The Bat’ when we need to.”

“So we’ve got a name. What now, Vale?”

“You see if you can get anything out of the cops,” said Vale. “I’ll try to track The Bat down, find where he lives.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Two days later, at Gearhead Motors, a dozen trucks had arrived. Thugs with shotguns wandered around the perimeter of the garage, eyes out for intruders. Inside, Red Hood Napier had summoned all of his subordinates in the East End to meet. They stood in a circle around him, Matches Malone one of them.

Napier spoke. “It’s good to see you all here, boys. But we have a problem. There’s a mole in our ranks.”

Bruce cursed in his head. If Napier was onto Malone… that may not necessarily be the case, but sending the SOS would be the better course of action either way.

Malone fiddled with his watch.

Outside, a guard heard a strange noise behind him. He turned around, pointing his gun at the source, and was laid low by a quick flurry of kicks and punches to his diaphragm and temples. Once Alfred was sure the guard was unconscious, he swore.

Inside, Napier continued speaking. “When the good Lieutenant Flass informed me that James Gordon had sent a cop in undercover to infiltrate us, I wasn’t disappointed…” so far he was speaking calmly. “Just mad!” He pulled out his gun and turned in a circle. “Fortunately, I know who the… traitor… is.”

Malone tensed up as the gun travelled towards him, then past him, finally settling on a dark-skinned man he’d worked with once or twice when infiltrating the Red Hoods.

“Benny,” Napier said. “Imagine my surprise when I discovered you were really-”

He never got to finish because ‘Benny’ had ducked, grabbed Napier’s arm, held it straight and brought his knee up into it. Napier screamed and dropped his gun. Then a small metal object came sailing through the window. It landed on the ground, splitting open, and smoke filled the room. In the chaos that ensued as Napier’s henchmen shot either at the window or where they presumed Benny to be, none of them noticed that a larger object had landed nearer the window. Nor could they see through the smoke, so they had no idea that Malone had stealthily made his way to the object. So they did not expect it when one by one they were struck down by the bat vigilante they had heard had taken down Milo, as he darted in and out of the smoke, evading all gunfire.

‘Benny’, meanwhile, had reached the exit and stepped out into the parking lot. Whatever the hell was happening, he’d have to call the others and tell them to make their move. And he needed a getaway vehicle, but fortunately he’d already parked his car only a couple of blocks away.

But he had to make sure the Red Hoods couldn’t take the trucks anywhere. He walked towards the nearest truck, pulling out his pocket knife…

Only to find that someone had already slashed the tires. Well, then. He might as well just get to his car and leave.

Once he’d reached his car, he opened the door, stepped in, turned on the engine and pulled out his cell phone. He dialled a number. “Gordon. Flass told the Red Hoods about me. Napier tried to shoot me, I took him out, then someone threw some sort of smoke bomb into the room. Next thing I know, that bat vigilante is taking the Hoods out one by one. Someone already slashed the tires on all the trucks. We need to get someone on the scene ASAP, take the Red Hoods in and use the drugs as evidence against them.”

Meanwhile, Bruce had made it to his own getaway car, where Alfred was already waiting for him at the steering wheel.

“Who helped you turbocharge this thing anyway?” the British man asked. Last time he checked, Bruce’s base of operations didn’t exactly include a garage.

“A guy who works for Gearhead Motors, ironically. His name’s Eric Cooper. He let me use the garage he runs to modify this car, even helped me with some of the trickier improvements. He’s a good man, as far as I can tell.”

Alfred set off. “So, you got made.”

“Not quite. There was an undercover cop there. Sent in by James Gordon, apparently.”

“The one from the Skeleton Crew? It might be good to make an alliance with him.”

“That’s too much of a risk. A connection between the bat vigilante and James Gordon could just sabotage both of us. Did you slash Napier’s tires too?”

“You didn’t exactly give me much time, did you? I only managed to get the trucks and rescue _your_ sorry arse.”

“So Napier probably got away.”

Alfred stopped the car outside of the building Bruce was living in.

“Probably. But today was still a success. You’ll be on the news again, no doubt.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd planned that scene at the end before I even had the idea for the story itself. Originally Bruce and Alfred were going to blow up the trucks, but while I was writing this chapter I changed my mind and went for something less... action film-y.


	3. Chapter Three

Matches Malone walked into the Iceberg sporting a red and purple bruise on his right eye and sat down at the bar. Candy stopped when she saw his face.

“Jesus, what happened to _you_!?”

“The goddamn _bat_ happened,” Matches grumbled. “I’m with the rest of the Hoods, Napier pulls a gun on a mole, next thing I know there’s smoke everywhere, everybody’s shooting and the bat’s punching me in the face. I high-tailed it out of there once I realized I didn’t have a shot at winning that fight.”

“So you bailed on Napier? You’re dead, then.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Is there anywhere in the city I can lay low?”

Candy spocked an eyebrow. “You’re saying you want to stay here? Well, at least you have balls. If I was you, I’d go to the Narrows: Napier still has power there, but not that much.”

Malone smiled. “Thanks for the advice, Candy.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Flass!”

James Gordon was known in the GCPD for three things: his unwavering sense of justice, his stubborn refusal to get with the program and become corrupt, and the fact that when he got pissed off even _mountains_ would be scared. And right now, he was _pissed off_.

Not that Flass cared. When he saw the detective storming towards him, he greeted him with a falsely cheerful “Gordo, what’s up?”

“You know exactly, what is up, you rat bastard! You interfered in _my case_ , put one of _my men_ at risk - and may I remind you that while Detective Ethan Bennet is not _your_ kind of cop he is _still_ a cop - just so you could keep _lining your pockets_ with money the Red Hood Gang pays you to let them keep _exploiting teenagers_ and even _kids_ who have already gotten the worst this damn city has to _offer_!”

“Whoa, Gordo,” Flass scoffed. “Way the Commissioner sees it, your Skeleton Crew stuck their noses in _my_ business, out of that hole you were assigned to so you’d stay out of trouble, and tried to disrupt the work of _my_ benefactors. I was just protecting my income, you see. Financial troubles, you understand. I could barely pay for that new car with the money I got by roughing up those teens.” Announcing that loudly may have seemed like over-the-top cartoon villainy, but Gordon knew exactly why Flass was doing it: because nobody in the precinct cared, and Gordon could see it. Flass patted Gordon on the shoulder. “Why don’t you just run along, and leave me to clean up the mess you’ve made.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Once again, John Blake was waiting on the fire escape. This time, however, he only had to wait a few minutes before the deep and rough voice of the bat said his name.

“Everyone’s talking about you now,” Blake replied. “First Milo, then Gearhead Motors. You’re like an urban legend now.”

“That’s what I was aiming for. Having a reputation is… useful.”

“Napier wants you dead, by the way. His enforcers have been looking for you all over the East End.”

The bat was unfazed. “They’re not going to find me.”

Blake was dumbfounded. “You… you regularly go on _patrols_ , there’s like seven enforcers and only one of you, and you think they won’t find you eventually?”

“Of course they won’t. Because now that you’ve told me about them, I’ll be the one doing the finding. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Blake said as the bat started to climb back up to the roof.

/\\-^|^-/\

At the Gotham Gazette, Vicky Vale and Al Knox were two of the top reporters, for two different reasons. Vicky was famous for pursuing any story - even if it seemed like a dead end - to the ends of the Earth, both literally (as literally as one can get when talking about the ends of a _globe_ ) and figuratively. Al, on the other hand, was known for cutting to the chase and just asking people about whatever story he was pursuing. So the two of them working together on finding the Bat of the East End seemed like the best bet.

“What’ve you got, Knox?” asked Vale.

“Well, I tried asking the police if the bat was on the police payroll and they laughed in my face and told me to do… well, the thing I do every other evening.”

Of course they did. That was the problem with Knox’s characteristic brand of bluntness. “You took it too far didn’t you.” There was no question in Vale’s voice.

“I just asked if there’s a six-foot tall bat on the police payroll… and what he’s bringing down, after taxes, if so.”

Vale rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. “Right. Well, while you were doing that, I’ve found a lead.” Vale strode over to her desk and opened the dossier she’d been building up on the Bat. “The first sighting I’ve been able to find out about was five weeks ago, in the Narrows. There may have been more before then, but that’s as far as I’ve been able to trace him. He started out small: taking on muggers, burglars and pickpockets; the ones that I’ve interviewed told me he’d tried to convince them not to do the crime they were about to do. Some of them listened, one’s even managed to turn his life around and start working on getting out of the Narrows. The rest… well, according to them the Bat knows his martial arts. He wasn’t wearing grey back then, he was wearing red and black. He still had the cape - or _actual wings_ according to some of them - but instead of the cowl he just had a domino mask. He’s white and tall, but that’s the best description I’ve been able to get. He even changed his hair colour every few outings. After about a week, the Skeleton Crew put Sawshark away. Apparently the Bat was involved in that. ”

Vale looked at Knox expectantly. “Oh, Sawshark, yeah.” Knox started talking. “It _was_ just over four weeks ago that a bunch of gangbangers turned up on the doorstep of the Skeleton Crew, all roughed up and zip tied. Turned out, they were working for Sawshark. The next day, guess who’s waiting for them on their doorstep and zip tied too? That seems to be the Bat’s kink when it comes to turning criminals over to the GCPD. Maybe he’s rich? Being into zip ties seems weird enough for them.”

“A rich guy who went from roughing it in the Narrows to roughing it in the East End? And _that’s_ where it gets interesting. After Sawshark was taken down, the Bat disappeared from the Narrows. People thought he got himself killed - that probably helped feed the idea that he’d fought Sawshark, people started saying that was how he died - but in the East End something similar started happening. A guy dressed as a bat taking down criminals. Same MO: tries to talk them out of it first, knows his martial arts… he had a different suit though. The grey one. Apparently the lenses are tinted and he has a black badge on his chest and a utility belt. The ones he’d talked out of it started showing up at a clinic on Park Row, saying he’d sent them there. The rumors spread and whenever someone who was at the clinic relapsed into crime, or just talked to a friend who was still committing crimes, another person heard of the Bat. Most of the East End didn’t believe he existed, and there were still some who hadn’t heard of him… until he took down Milo. All of a sudden, the guy was more than just an urban legend. He was either a folk hero, or the bogeyman under the bogeyman’s bed.”

“You said he sends people to a clinic now?”

“Yeah. That’s my next lead.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Dan was _not_ having a good day. If anything, it was the opposite.

It had all started… well, it had started when his day had started. Napier had him and six other enforcers crawling the East End to kill some flying rodent dumbass who’d pissed Napier off, which is how Dan and Nate - another enforcer - had ended up on a rooftop after midnight, eating Hostess fruit pies (that part wasn’t so bad). Now, someone who did not live in Gotham might not see the problem with this, but any Gothamite would tell them that as much as Gotham sucked rat testicles during the day, it got much worse at night when all the muggers, thieves, pickpockets, beggars, junkies and other assorted victims of the city’s never-ending economic screw-up came out of their hiding holes because they didn’t have to worry about the cops who mostly couldn’t be bothered to do any more work than what they needed to make a dishonest day’s dough. This made the night-time dangerous to normal people and difficult to work in for professionals like Dan. Even without taking into account the coffees he had already drunk to stay completely awake.

As if sitting on a rooftop at night wasn’t bad enough, the bat actually had to show up. That _should_ have been a good thing: they’d be able to do what they’d been hired to do, get paid and go home. Instead…

They’d pulled their guns on the bat vigilante when he’d leapt onto a rooftop only two blocks away. That was a mistake: the maniac had rolled to the side out of the path of the bullets about three times until they’d run out of ammo, then he’d stepped onto the edge of the roof, leapt over the alley beneath, sprinted across the next roof, then repeated the same leap to reach the rooftop that _they_ were on - all in the time it had taken them to reload. Dan and Nate both knew that guns were long-range weapons and using them against a guy within arm’s reach was both risky and wasteful, so they’d holstered their firearms and ran at the costumed nutjob.

A nutjob who had proceeded to step back from Nate’s kick, duck under Dan’s punch, turn so that he was between the two, grab Dan’s arm and flip the enforcer over his shoulder and right onto the other enforcer, who had been about to tackled their target. Nate’s face had crashed into the roof and while Dan had managed to roll off him, he’d promptly been kicked in the diaphragm by the bat.

That had put him out of the fight while he tried to catch his breath, leaving him to watch as Nate had stood back up with a bloodied face, spat out a tooth and threw his trademark left hook at the bat. The bat had caught Nate’s fist and pushed, bending the enforcer’s arm before causing him to lose balance with a karate-style chop to the neck, then finishing the job with a kick to the knees that sent Nate crumpling - there was no other word for it - to the ground.

By then, Dan had regained his breath and risen to his feet. As the bat turned towards him, he had raised his fists and begun stepping from side to side, changing his speed to make it harder to predict where he’d be. It was no use: the bat had lashed out with a sweeping kick that met Dan’s legs as he stepped to the left, knocking Dan off-balance for a few seconds; that few seconds had been enough for a trio of strikes to his skull to cause him to lose consciousness.

So, to summarise, during the first half-hour of his day, Dan had been stood on a roof in the most miserable city in the Rust Belt during the most miserable time of day, then had his ass kicked by the guy he’d been hired to kill. That had been a bad start.

He was then rudely woken up when a bucket of water had been emptied on his head. It took him a few seconds to realize he was blindfolded and tied to a wooden chair. He could feel the wind on his face; thanks to the water it felt freezing. There was something on the back of his neck. And he was really wishing he hadn’t had those coffees earlier.

Someone growled in his ear. “Napier hired you to kill me, didn’t he?”

“You the bat? Yeah: he hired me and Nate, and five others! So don’t think you’re out of the woods just because you took us down, asshole! You’re still gonna die, and then I’m gonna spit on your grave!”

The bat chuckled. It was terrifying. “The first five enforcers I took down said the same thing. Well, things along those lines.” Dan could hear the bat’s footsteps as he walked around him. “But that’s not the point. The point, _Danny Ford_ , is what’s going to happen next, the same thing that happened with the others: you’re going to tell me everything you know about Napier’s plans, I’m going to let you go and you’re going to get out of town; at least that’s what will happen if you’re smart.”

Dan swore. “You think just cause you got one of the other schmucks to tell you my name, I’ll spill the beans!? I’m an enforcer, asshole: we don’t get hired for being chicken!”

“They’re never smart when I ask the first time, are they?” The wood of the chair creaked as if it was under an iron grip.

“What was that? You calling me stup-AAAAH!” The ‘AAAAH’ was a scream produced when Dan suddenly became aware of the air rushing past his face as if he was falling - any moment now, his head would be cracked open by the sidewalk…

There was a sharp tug. Then Dan felt himself ascending.

“I’m not going to explain this to you again,” the bat said, his voice full of authority. “You _will_ tell me everything you know about Napier, his plans, his employees, his resources, and his bosses. If you don’t, I’ll untie the rope.”

Dan was a reasonable person. So once he stopped hyperventilating, he ignored the feeling of wetness in his boxers and started talking.

/\\-^|^-/\

“What’s his name?” Gordon asked Montoya.

“Danny Ford. He’s a Red Hood enforcer. We got an anonymous phone call telling us where to find him and we did. Tied to a chair. Yelling about the bat vigilante.”

“Seventh one in the last three days,” Yin added. “Only an hour after we found the last guy.”

“Looks like the bat is our friend after all,” Bullock said sarcastically. “Maybe we’ll all hold hands and clean up Gotham with the power of friendship.”

“Bullock, stop being so cynical.”

“Anyway,” said Bennet, trying to get the discussion back on track, “Ford told us a lot of useful information about Napier. But I’m guessing the Commissioner wants us to get back to the Narrows.”

“According to Flass, he does,” said Gordon. “Which means he does.”

“We don’t care, do we?” asked Montoya. “There are only so many of us actually doing our jobs anyway.”

Gordon nodded, then looked through the one-way mirror into the interrogation room where Danny Ford was cuffed to the table. “So what do we know?”

/\\-^|^-/\

“So what do we know?” asked Alfred a few days after the interrogation of the last two enforcers.

Bruce stepped away from the cork board on the wall, which now had various Red Hood Gang-related photographs pinned to it, joined by red string and with a map of Gotham showing the Red Hoods’ properties in the centre. “We know that Napier is only a lieutenant in the Red Hoods and he’s on thin ice with their leader,” Bruce pointed to a small sheet with the Red Hood hierarchy printed on it, “who calls himself ‘Doctor Death’. We know that the Red Hoods are using TYGER as hired guns. We know that most of Napier’s funds and goods come from the Ace Chemicals plant in the Industrial Quarter - he’s a majority stockholder, but the other three,” Bruce pointed to photographs of each one, “Lambert, Stryker, and Origami, are allegedly making a deal to put all their stock in Ace into Rogers Holdings, a shell corporation owned by all three. That will give them control of Ace Chemicals, screwing Napier over completely. We know that Napier still has two enforcers and a bodyguard at his disposal: the enforcers should be easy enough to deal with, but the bodyguard - Phil Jennings - has an impressive record. He was a Navy SEAL, but after being honourably discharged it turned out that the reason why he was so effective was because he was a well-hidden cold-blooded killer. I’ll have a better chance of taking him down if I get a good look at him so that I can deduce probable weak spots.”

“But you’re not just planning on taking on Napier, are you? It would be better to get the evidence from Ace Chemicals first, not all of it but enough to give the police a reason to investigate the company and find some documents that would be admissible in court.”

“Exactly. I’ll need to break into the manager’s office at the chemical plant to obtain documents incriminating Napier, and more importantly I’ll have to watch the site in case Napier makes a move. I’ll also need you to keep track of any police radio transmissions connected to Napier or Ace,” Bruce said as he gestured to the radio he’d built and tuned to the police frequencies.

“Right. I’ll let you know if I hear anything interesting.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon and Bullock pulled up outside a high-rise apartment block in WesDa. Bullock pointed out the obvious. “Guy’s making profits off the misery of the people in the East End, the Narrows and the Industrial Quarter… meanwhile he’s living in the best neighbourhood _in_ the city.”

“Of course he is. If _you_ knew the kind of stuff your chemical plant was pumping out, would you want to live anywhere near it?”

“True. So: we go up there, somehow convince Lambert not to slam the door in our faces, then ask him to help us bring Napier down?”

“Close. We ask him to help us bring Napier down, which should be enough that he’ll hear us out and tell us what we need to know.”

“Right. Let’s go in then.”

Gordon and Bullock strode in through the lobby and into the elevator as if they were supposed to be there - that was, after all, the best way to not be stopped - and somehow managed to pull it off despite the fact that Bullock hadn’t shaved in over a month and currently reeked of alcohol. It was only once they got out of the elevator and knocked on the door to Lambert’s apartment that the problems began.

“Joseph Lambert?” Gordon called. “We’re with the GCPD.” A shout of fear came from the other side of the door. “We’re here to talk to you about Jack Napier. Let us in so we can talk.”

A young voice on the other side of the door - the same one that had shouted earlier - yelled at them to go away. Gordon was about to respond when he saw Harvey pulling a large hammer out of his trenchcoat.

“We’re you carrying that around with you just in case we’d have to break through a priceless mahogany door?” Gordon whispered.

“I refuse to dignify that with an answer,” Bullock replied before proceeding to eagerly hammer a hole in the priceless mahogany door. He reached through the door and unlocked it from the inside.

The two policemen stepped into the room and saw a young man they recognised as Joseph Lambert Jr standing over the corpse of his father, a knife in the younger’s hands and a matching hole in the elder’s back. Joseph Jr was crying. “I didn’t do it!” he shouted as the two men approached him. “I found him ju-just lying there… the knife i-in his back… I-I didn’t know what to do… p-pulled the knife out… please, I didn’t do it!”

/\\-^|^-/\

A few minutes later, in the East End, Bruce was standing on a rooftop, wearing the bat costume and peering through a set of binoculars to observe the activity at the Ace Chemicals plant. Under his cowl, he was wearing a set of earbuds. As he watched the guards walking around the perimeter of the plant and studied their movements, he heard Alfred’s voice in his ear.

“Looks like I’ve found that ‘something interesting’ you’ve had me looking for, and it’s a right bloody mess too: Lambert’s been stabbed and his son’s fingerprints are on the blade. Apparently he took the blade out of his dad’s back when he found him dead, and now he’s looking at a murder charge.”

Bruce took the transmitter from his utility belt and spoke into it. “If the son’s story is true, then the killer leaving the blade behind means they were a professional: confident they wouldn’t be risking anything - so they wore gloves and the knife is hard to trace - and possibly that they knew the target well enough to predict what the son would do. He is a good scapegoat: doesn’t he have an anger problem?”

“I’m looking at his information right now and yes he does - he was prescribed medication for it too. In fact, it cost him a position at his father’s company. That’s a motive right there.”

“Shift the blame to the person with the most obvious motive but make the message clear for Stryker and Origami: Napier keeps Ace Chemicals. It makes sense, but I’ll have to investigate further. I’ll head to the address now.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“You’re gonna like this, Jim,” said Bullock.

“Forensics found evidence?”

“Yeah, get this: they went in the bathroom and found a bottle of prescription drugs. Specifically the ones junior over there was prescribed to help with his anger. Judging by the label, he’d _picked it up today_ and it’s already open. He took his meds Jim, he couldn’t have flipped out and stabbed his old man!”

“And all the information we have says that despite his exclusion from his father’s company, they had a positive relationship. A premeditated murder is unlikely, even without taking his reaction into account.”

Bullock’s face fell as he realized where Jim was going with this.

“Napier had Lambert killed. He’s going to go after Origami or Stryker next.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Travelling by car from the Industrial Quarter to WesDa would take a long time when taking the traffic in the business district into account. Travelling by rooftop parkour took Bruce significantly less time. The wider streets may have posed a problem had it not been for the tall buildings, his grappling hook and the grotesques that made such good targets _for_ said hook. In less than two dozen minutes, he was at his destination. It took him less than one minute to scale the side of the building and climb up into the balcony and into the apartment - after checking with Alfred that the police had left the scene for the time being, then double checking with his binoculars.

Immediately, he noticed evidence that an assassin had committed the murder: above him, a ledge jutting out from the roof was slightly out of place, as if someone had used it to secure a rappelling rope before descending onto the balcony. The second sign was the chalk outline of the body: the position indicated that Lambert had been stabbed with his back to the window, which made sense assuming that an assassin had killed him from the balcony. Given the placement of Lambert’s chair near the window but facing the wall on the opposite side of the room, the fact that the chalk outline was directly between said chair and the wine closet, the book with a bookmark at the halfway point on the nightstand, the fact that at least one recent interview with Lambert had him describe a habit of reading a book in his favourite chair then putting the book down and walking over to the wine closet to get himself something to drink before returning to his chair…

Assuming that an assassin _had_ been the murderer, it was fairly easy to reconstruct what happened. The assassin had rappelled down onto the balcony while Lambert was reading, Lambert had stood up and begun to make the journey over to the wine closet, the assassin struck and climbed back up to the roof. On the other hand, if Lambert’s son had been the killer then he would have argued with Lambert first: _facing_ him. The knife would have been in Lambert’s chest, not his back.

And then there was another factor: Lambert Jr had an anger problem, the presumed motive if he was the killer. So where had he gotten the knife? The murder would have been a crime of passion, not premeditated. He wouldn’t have had a weapon with him.

Of course, none of this was conclusive evidence - merely assumptions that indicated the more probable scenario. Together, these observations did make a strong case for an assassination rather than patricide, but he’d need something more conclusive to be sure.

Bruce strode through the room, careful not to disturb the crime scene or leave traces of his presence. He made his way to the bathroom, the inklings of an idea in his head.

Sure enough, he found what he’d been expecting. Or rather, a sign of it: a ring of condensation on the shelf behind the bathroom mirror. The kind you’d expect if a bottle of prescription drugs had recently been removed from said shelf. A good indicator that the forensics technicians had considered it to be evidence, which would make it relevant to what had transpired here… the bottle had probably been opened, and Lambert Jr had probably picked it up that same day - it was probably a bottle of the drug he’d been prescribed to help with his anger. So he couldn’t have killed his father in a fit of anger - he wouldn’t have _had_ it in the first place.

As for whether he’d have premeditated it, he’d need a character witness for that… but this was still enough for Bruce to operate under the assumption that either Stryker or Origami would be the next to die.

No, not die. Not necessarily. But they would receive a visit from one of Napier’s enforcers. Presumably they’d be presented with evidence of Lambert’s death. If they still refused to co-operate, _then_ they’d die.

/\\-^|^-/\

“How’d it go, man?” the assassin asked his partner.

The other man sneered. “The idiot saw the photos and still said no. Now there’s a bullet hole in his head.”

“You got the contract?”

“Yeah. Any luck with Origami?”

“He gave me the contracts without argument. That’s all three copies.”

A third voice spoke. “Perfect. Three sets of evidence against your boss.”

The two enforcers turned around to see the man who had already defeated their seven co-workers. Then he tackled the one on the left, grabbed the one on the right and threw him at a nearby wall, seized the one he’d tackled in a choke hold until the assassin slipped into unconsciousness, and incapacitated the other with a kick to the stomach, a knee to the face and a strike to the temple.

As the bat vigilante seized the contracts from the men, a grim smile came to his lips.

/\\-^|^-/\

Mr Origami was a respected man. He was not considered particularly honourable, being a businessman in Gotham, but he was powerful and therefore received respect. The first reason why he was so powerful was that he knew when the odds were against him and chose not to gamble - something that saved him a great deal of defeats. The second was that he always had a way to salvage his power from a bad situation. That second reason was why he had now arranged a meeting with Napier in the Ace Chemicals plant.

His driver pulled up outside of the building. Origami stepped out of the limo and was greeted by Napier and his brute of a bodyguard, blood-shot eyes and all. They exchanged pleasantries and he was led inside. They stepped into an elevator and ascended to a walkway. Walking across the metal bridge, Origami could look over the building and see the vats of chemicals below. They stepped into the manager’s office. The bodyguard was the last to enter. The manager was sitting at a pine wood desk, below a skylight.

The manager greeted them, inviting Napier and Origami to sit down. Origami got down to business.

“Your chemical plant’s stock was until tonight owned by four people. Two of them are now dead, at his hands,” Origami gestured to Napier. “And he’s threatened me into giving up my share as well. I arranged this meeting on the pretext of formally giving up my stock to give Mr Napier full control of Ace Chemicals. But I have no intention to allow a gang of lowlifes to control this company. That is why I am now making the two of you and offer: give _me_ full control of Ace Chemicals, and in return I let you leave here alive.”

For a few seconds, a heavy silence descended on the room. Then Napier cackled, pulled out his gun and shot the manager between the eyes. Origami was about to respond, but he was seized by the bodyguard, who began to choke him.

Then the skylight was smashed to pieces as a grey-suited figure leapt into the room, landing on the desk. Jennings turned his head to look and was struck in the side - right where his liver was - with a wrench. It was a light wrench, so it did not kill him, but it was a wrench so it did cause him pain. Enough pain for him to release Origami and be pummelled by the figure - who Origami could now see was the so-called ‘man in the bat costume’. If he’d wanted to deal with masked vigilantes, he’d have stayed in Tokyo and taken his chances with Mr Unknown.The bodyguard fell to the ground as Napier ran out the door and onto the walkway. The vigilante pursued, catching up to Napier and tackling him to the ground. Napier managed to slip out of the bat’s grip and faced his pursuer.The bat spoke first. “Give up Napier. There’s no way out of this for you. I’ve taken down all of your enforcers and they’re already in police custody, singing like mockingbirds.”“Did you come up with that metaphor yourself, or did you have someone write it for you?” Napier growled.The bat seemed confused. “That was a simile, not a metaphor- that’s not the point!” He became serious again. “You’re done, Napier. Don’t even bother running away.”Napier threw a knife at the vigilante and tried to run away. Then Origami took out his gun and shot Napier in the back. The Red Hood lieutenant stopped, then fell over the railing into a vat of chemicals. The bat turned around.He was furious. “What did you do!?”Origami remained calm. “As far as all the courts will know, self-defence at most. By the time they fish his body out of that _soup_ , there won’t be enough left of him or the bullet to say I killed him at all.”“He could have testified against the Red Hood Gang! And you had _no_ justifiable reason for killing him!”“I had two: revenge for threatening me, and gaining complete control of Ace Chemicals. He would have had the contracts destroyed. Instead, he’s made me the sole owner of  Rogers Holdings. As for _you_ , you can either leave know or be accused of beating an innocent man.”The vigilante re-entered the manager’s office. When Origami followed him, he had already gone.

/\\-^|^-/\

As he was driven home, Origami revelled in his triumph. Things had turned out exactly as he’d planned when Napier confronted him about the contracts and Origami told him that only death would keep the three of them from stealing Napier’s hold over Ace Chemicals.

He heard sirens behind him and instructed his driver to pull over. He pulled down the window to see the face of GCPD Sergeant Gordon - moustache and all.

“Michael Origami?”

“That’s me,” he said, with apprehension. “Is there a problem, officer?”

“You’re under arrest. We’ve received an anonymous phone call about the incident at Ace Chemicals. We’ve got people dredging the vat for Jack Napier’s body right now.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Have you been carrying a wrench on you _this whole time_?” Blake asked.

“Only when there’s a chance that I’ll have to break a skylight,” the bat replied defensively.

They were having another conversation across the alley.

“You know, between Ace Chemicals being shut down and Napier dying, it’s going to take the Red Hoods a while to recover. This is your chance to take them down completely.”

“I’ve already started investigating Dr Death and his remaining lieutenants.”

“That’s a start. But you might not have to do that on your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a reporter at the clinic today. Vicky Vale. She wanted to know about you.”

“Will she be back? Can you arrange a meeting?”

“Yes,” Blake smiled, “and yes.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon was in the parking lot, walking towards his car. Napier’s death set them back a long way, but not _that_ long: they still had Napier’s enforcers, who might still be holding onto some information, and Origami; then there was the bat. So they had a few leads on the Red Hoods left.

He was deep in thought, but he still noticed the man in the balaclava hiding behind his car.

Gordon’s reflexes were quick enough to jump out of the way of the man’s baseball bat and wrench the weapon out of his hands, but not quick enough to account for five more men attacking him at once.

The strikes knocked him to the ground and the men continued to bludgeon him. When he was bruised, battered and bleeding, they kept going until their leader told them to stop.

The leader stepped towards Gordon and took of his mask. It was Flass.

“I warned ya, Gordo. You should’ve stayed out of my business. This is just making sure you understand the message.” He leaned in closer to Gordon. “You better be careful, Gordo. With you gone, who’d be left to protect your daughter?”

Flass’ gang walked away laughing.

The last thing Gordon heard before he passed out was Harvey calling his name.

 


	4. Chapter Four

Dr. Leslie Thompkins had managed to catch a respite from the hectivity that had been a near-constant presence in her clinic for the last four weeks. When she wasn’t attending to a patient, she was managing the clinic’s finances or figuring out which medical supplies she needs more of, and what quantity. Of course, as stressful as it may be, she was glad that the man in the bat costume was helping people and that he seemed to trust her (although she couldn’t approve of his use of violence).

The fact that Vicky Vale had returned to the clinic at exactly the time when this respite had begun was one of those coincidences that bolstered Leslie’s belief in a divine authority of _some_ sort. She greeted the red-headed reporter and invited her into Leslie’s office, a small room at the back of the clinic that mainly contained a desk and some filing cabinets.

“You don’t mind if I record this, do you?” Vicky asked as she sat down across from Leslie.

“Not at all,” Leslie replied.

Vicky placed her digital recorder on the desk and turned it on. “How long has the Bat of the East End been sending people to your clinic?”

“The first person he sent came here on the twenty-eighth of April. A girl who’d tried to rob a local grocery store. She wasn’t after money, just food. She didn’t have any money, just a knife. When I asked her about it, she said the Bat had paid for the loaf of bread she’d tried to steal before telling her about my clinic. That was the first time I’d even heard of him, but I got the sense that he was here to help.”

“Are any of them still in contact with the Bat?”

“I wouldn’t know, but there have been rumours. There’s one boy - the Bat caught him stealing prescription drugs. Both of his siblings have health problems. The Bat told him about me and now his brother and sister are patients here, getting the treatment they need. He’s even been doing volunteer work here once a week. Anyway, after he first came here he started talking about finding the Bat again, to thank him. Some of the other kids here… they think he might be a sort of informant for the Bat now. Passing information to him. But I don’t know anything for sure.”

Vicky paused the recorder. “This is off the record, but who is this boy? I’d like to speak with him and ask him what he knows.”

“As long as you guarantee his anonymity,” Leslie said.

“I won’t mention his name in my article. I promise,” Vicky said sincerely.

“In that case, his name is John Blake.”

Vicky turned the recorder back on and the interview continued. She asked questions about how Leslie and the people at her clinic had reacted when the Bat had taken down Milo, how they reacted when he had seemed to declare war on the Red Hood Gang, the rumours about the Bat’s involvement at Gearhead, and notable stories about the Bat. When news of Milo’s arrest broke the kids at the clinic had cheered, when the Bat started attacking the Red Hoods the clinic grew fearful of the consequences, after the incident at Gearhead stories of the Bat’s appearance during the Red Hoods’ meeting spread quickly and it didn’t take long for people at the clinic to piece together that the Bat had been the one to slash the tires on those trucks. There was no shortage of notable stories either.

Eventually, the interview ended. Vicky stopped the recorder, the two women said their goodbyes and Vicky left the clinic. As she walked away from the humble building, she heard a young voice calling her name: “Miss Vale!”

Vicky turned around to see a boy - sixteen or seventeen years old, Latino, skinny and dark-haired - approaching her.

“I heard you’ve been asking about the Bat,” he said.

“You heard right,” Vicky replied. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

The boy laughed. “I can do better than that. How would you like an exclusive interview with the man himself?”

Vicky started to suspect she’d already heard about this boy. “What’s your name?”

“John Blake.”

Vicky smiled. “That interview sounds good.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Meanwhile, at Sacred Heart Hospital, Jim Gordon was waking up as the morphine wore off.

“You’re awake, I see.”

Gordon blinked.

He was lying on his back in a white room. He could feel the new stiches in his side. The man talking to him was wearing a doctor’s coat and probably _was_ a doctor (only probably - Jim had encountered fake doctors before, unlikely as that was in the city that compensated for its crime rates with its education system). That was all he needed to infer that he was in the hospital.

Gordon tried to see if he could speak. “Who…” he could. “Brought me here?”

“Your partner,” the doctor replied. “Bullock found you in the parking lot. He called an ambulance and they brought you here: the Sacred Heart Hospital.”

At that point the door opened and a red-headed blur shot past the doctor towards Gordon.

“Dad!” the blur said, hugging Jim. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Barbara,” Jim reassured her. “I’m okay.”

Barbara looked up, furious. “Uncle Harvey told me what those _bastards_ did to you.”

“Language, Barbara.”

Bullock walked into the room. Jim looked at him. “You _told_ her?”

“She wouldn’t stop asking me,” Bullock raised his hands apologetically. “And she’s even better than _you_ at knowing when I’m lying.”

Jim laughed.

The doctor cleared his throat. “This is touching, but there are some things that we need to discuss.”

Jim looked at Barbara. “Sorry sweetie. Looks like you’re going to have to step out for a little while.”

“I get it Dad,” Barbara smiled, placing a keychain with a red Ferrari on it in Jim’s hand. “Just… promise nothing’s going to go wrong.”

“Scout’s honour,” Jim said, taking the keychain. “I promise, Barbara.”

Barbara hugged Jim again before leaving the room. She closed the door behind her.

“What do you want to discuss, doctor?” Jim said.

The doctor narrowed his eyes. “In all likelihood, you’re going to make a full recovery. Which means we’ll need insurance.”

“Insurance?” Jim didn’t understand.

“Oh for god’s sake!” Bullock _did_ understand. “You’re not seriously doing this, are you Doc?”

“Actually, Detective Bullock, we are,” the doctor replied. “Healthcare is one of the more lucrative professions, yes, but that doesn’t mean much in Gotham. It helps to have certain side businesses, and they happen to be the exact kinds of businesses the two of you have a reputation for shutting down.”

Jim caught on and became livid. “Are you telling me that you’ve been selling _medicine_ as recreational drugs on the street!?”

“That’s right, Sergeant Gordon. And that’s why we need insurance. We have to know that you won’t screw us over in the future.”

Bullock butted in, stepping in front of the doctor and getting close enough to make the latter uncomfortable. “Listen, Doc,” Bullock hissed. “That ‘insurance’ is something you’re never going to get. But if you _don’t try anything_ while my buddy is in your care… well, let’s just say we’ll give you time to get ready.”

“Bullock,” Jim warned.

“We got a deal, Doc?”

The doctor nodded and left.

Harvey turned back to Jim. “I know you don’t approve. But this way, we don’t have to worry about you while you’re here.” He sighed. “You’ve got to learn to be more careful, Jim. Flass could have killed you - for all we know, next time he _will_!”

“If you’re asking me to stop butting heads with him, I won’t.”

“I know,” Bullock said. “I know. I just… Just watch whose toes you step on, okay Jim?”

/\\-^|^-/\

Late at night, Vicky arrived at the address the kid had given her. It didn’t look like much - just another apartment block in the East End - but according to him, this was the time and place the Bat had told him to give her. She stood in the alley’s shadow and called. “I’m here.”

“I know.”

Vicky spun around. She hadn’t heard anyone approach behind her, but there he was: the Bat. He looked almost exactly like she heard he had, although he was slightly shorter than described even if he still towered over her.

“I thought you’d be taller.”

The Bat grunted. “I heard you were looking for me.” As he spoke, he opened a door and gestured for her to step through. “That you want to run an article on ‘the Bat of the East End’. Good name, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Vicky replied. “You mind if I record this?” She asked, taking out the digital device. They were in a large, empty room.

“Go ahead. But I have one condition: if I do this interview, you’ll help me gather intel on a case if I ask you to.”

“Seems reasonable.” They shook hands and Vicky turned on the recorder.

“So, what do you want to know?”

“First question: why did you choose _here_ for a meeting?”

“The building is abandoned, so we don’t have to worry about any aggressive residents. It’s also not near my apartment, so I don’t have to worry about my address being compromised.”

“You seem paranoid,” Vicky observed.

“I prefer the term ‘careful’.”

She acknowledged this with a shrug. “Next question: why a bat?”

“It’s distinctive. A random vigilante or good Samaritan is one thing - hell, in Gotham a good Samaritan is always going to make headlines anyway - but I knew that if I wanted to be effective, I’d have to be a symbol as much as a person.”

“And what do you want to be effective _at_?”

“Making Gotham safe. Giving the city back to the good people, not just the mob bosses and their accomplices and employees. Changing things for the better.”

“Ambitious. What inspired you to do that?”

“My parents wanted the best for this city. They laid the foundation for… well, for this. The other event that determined that I’d end up doing this was the Waynes being murdered. As a kid, I’d always thought they were untouchable. I think most of us did. When they died, I realized that nobody’s safe in Gotham. After that, I saw more and more of how messed-up this city is. Eventually I decided to do something about it, but I’d spent enough time in the Narrows to know that just beating criminals up wouldn’t do the job.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Meanwhile, Michael Origami was still stewing in jail. He was feeling humiliated, vengeful, but most importantly he was feeling absolutely _bored_. There wasn’t much to do in a jail cell beyond staring at the wall and occasionally mocking the guard outside. That and waiting for food to arrive.

At the exact moment that Origami thought that, the guard did indeed send a tray of mashed potatoes through the slot in the cell door. It was almost as if somebody had written it that way.

Origami took the tray and started eating. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

Nor did he realize exactly _what_ he’d eaten until a few minutes later, when he fell to the floor and started convulsing and frothing at the mouth.

/\\-^|^-/\

Alfred was on the phone when Bruce returned.

“No, Harriet, he won’t come back. Not yet… Yes, I asked him. He says he doesn’t think he can help the city as Bruce Wayne right now… I don’t agree either, but we both know the _real_ reason he’s reluctant to come back and I won’t force him to face that until he’s ready.” Bruce didn’t catch any of the conversation except for the last few words, when he opened the door and walked into his apartment in his costume. Alfred continued talking to Harriet. “I’m staying here with him. He needs someone around, Harriet… I _know_ that, but he’s been living off of _microwaved food_. How’s he supposed to be a vigilante if he can’t bloody feed himself?”

“Tell Harriet I said hi,” Bruce said as he removed his cape and cowl.

“Bruce says hi, Harriet,” Alfred said into the phone. He listened, then turned to Bruce. “Harriet says hi back, and ‘why don’t you come to the damn phone yourself the next time, boy?’ Those were her exact words,” Alfred clarified.

Bruce smiled. The Wayne Manor housekeeper hadn’t been as close to Bruce as Alfred had been, but he still considered her family. “Tell Harold I said hi to him too, Harriet.”

Alfred passed on the message, said bye to Harriet and hung up the phone. He turned to face Bruce. “Bit early to take that gear off,” he said. “Before I got the call from Harriet, I was listening to that police radio of yours. Michael Origami died in jail a few hours ago. They think he’s been poisoned.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Barbara had managed to sneak into the security room and had successfully cracked the security (no, she didn’t extinguish the firewall or any Hollywood bullcrap like that. She just plugged her laptop into the system and uploaded a virus to the server to get her access. She was just going through the security footage and compiling the videos that would be useful when Harvey entered the room behind her.

“Watcha doing?” he asked.

Barbara nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned, figuring that Harvey already had an idea of what she was doing since he’d managed to find her here. “Don’t tell Dad,” she asked him.

Harvey put his hand on his heart. “I promise, kid. So, what are you doing?”

“I hacked the hospital servers. I heard what that doctor told you and Dad - about how the doctors at Sacred Heart are drug dealers too - so I’m finding any security footage that shows them pocketing medicine to sell and putting it onto the flash drive. I’m going to send it to the media,” Barbara said determinedly.

Harvey grinned. “Nice work, kid. One problem though: the doctors at this hospital might not be the most honest people, but they’re still doctors and we’re going to need a lot of those in the future. Also, if you leak those videos too soon, people will blame Jim.”

Barbara’s confidence deflated. “I really screwed up, huh?”

“I didn’t say that. I just think it might be good if you held onto that for a while. I’ll tell you when the time is right, okay?”

Barbara smiled. “Okay.”

Meanwhile, Jim was watching sports in his room at the hospital when the door opened and a female police officer entered. She was tall, blonde and Hispanic, and Jim could tell she had a muscular build.

“Sergeant Gordon?” she said.

“That’s me,” Jim replied. “And you are?”

“I’m Lieutenant Essen. I’m from Internal Affairs. I think the two of us can make a deal.”

“You want me to be a rat?” Jim asked as Essen took a set in one of the chairs by the window.

Essen leaned towards Jim. “I want you to help me take down Arnold Flass.”

“You got a deal,” Jim said.

There was a cough. Jim looked up and Essen turned to see Bullock standing by the door.

“Were you going to consult the rest of our crew on this decision Jim?” Harvey asked sarcastically.

“This doesn’t have to involve you,” Jim replied.

“If it involves you, it involves us,” Bullock responded. “We’re in this together, Jim.”

“And I’m not backing out of this,” said Jim.

“Then neither am I. And neither are Montoya, or Bennet, or any of us.”

Essen wrote something down on a piece of paper and gave it to Jim. “Well, call me when you’re ready to talk strategy. I’ll give you time to tell the rest of your crew about this.” She stood up and left the room. Bullock followed her.

Once they were outside, she turned. “What do you want?”

“Just to tell you one thing,” Bullock said. “Jim is a good cop. He’s smart, he’s brave, and he knows what’s right. But he’s also an idiot prone to getting himself hurt. And if you drag him back into this mess just to get him hurt again - or _worse_ -  then I will personally dig around in your closet until I find enough skeletons to put you out of the force for good. So don’t. Get. My partner. Hurt. Understand?”

“I understand, Detective Bullock. Believe me when I say I have no intention of letting that happen, whether or not you threaten me.”

/\\-^|^-/\

The next evening, Vicky was in her office, typing up the transcript of her interview with the Bat of the East End, when she heard a tapping noise. It took her seconds to realise that it hadn’t come from the recording. She paused the recording and walked over to the window to see the Bat standing just outside. She opened the window to let him in.

“How did you even get up to that balcony in the first place?”

“I have a grappling hook.”

“I’ll put that in my article,” said Vicky. “I’m guessing this visit is your way of calling in that favour.”

“Michael Origami was poisoned in jail. I think somebody’s trying to cover up their tracks.”

“That somebody being?..”

“The leader of the Red Hood Gang. Someone whose only known moniker is Dr Death.”

“I ran an article about Dr Death a while ago,” Vicky recalled. “I managed to put together a list of suspects. I didn’t release any names because I couldn’t be sure and while I’ll risk a defamation lawsuit from a criminal, I won’t risk my credibility. But I kept the list of likely candidates, and I’ve got info on all of them.”

“Show me.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Vicky had been smart enough to keep multiple copies of her files in different locations, including two digital drives, one of which would automatically upload to the internet if she didn’t log in to the system for forty-eight hours. She’d given the Bat one of three sets of photocopies she’d made and he’d taken it back to his… cave? He’d smirked in amusement when she’d asked him if he lived in a cave during their interview.

Anyway, they’d agreed that he’d add the copies to the info he already had on Dr Death to try to narrow down the suspect list, then text her the name or names (hopefully the singular) of whoever he’d narrow it down _to_ so that she’d be able to carry out a more thorough investigation and give him a copy of her findings in exchange for access to the information he’d collected. The Bat would take down the leader of the Red Hood Gang and she’d have gotten _yet_ _another_ story thanks to him. Win-win.

Bruce and Alfred had put together a psychological profile of Dr Death based on the information they already had. The Red Hood leader was arrogant and powerful, and wanted everyone to know it. Someone like that with that much power wouldn’t continue to work a menial job, but _would_ flaunt their wealth. Drive fast cars, date supermodels, buy things that are not for sale… That narrowed down the suspect list to the people who fit that profile. Of those three, one was the most suspicious: a recluse who made his fortune on the legal side of the drug business with the help of several wealthy financial backers (some of whom Bruce and Alfred had been able to link to the Red Hoods) and whose disappearance from the public eye coincided with the formation of the Red Hoods. Hell, he’d been attacked in his own home right before the power struggle in the Red Hood Gang that led to Dr Death becoming its sole leader.

That was how Vicky received a text containing two words: ‘ _Carl Fern_ ’. Fern had been one of Vicky’s suspects and had made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. So she took a cab to the Estates to talk to some of Fern’s financial backers from those days.

Most of the backers turned her away - one even threatened to release the hounds - but one was different. The backer himself was dead, but his children told her he’d had a drug habit and Fern had known about it. How did he know? Fern had been the man’s dealer. And then he’d turned around and blackmailed his high-profile customer. Apparently that wasn’t the only time Fern had done that.

Once Vicky knew that, she was able to make more headway with her other leads. Simply telling them that she knew how Fern had been blackmailing them and that she could help protect them got people to start co-operating. She was able to find out that Fern lived in a penthouse he owned through a real estate corporation which in turn was owned by PharmaGoth (yes, _that_ was what Fern called his pharmaceutical corporation).

Of course, rumours weren’t exactly court-admissible evidence. But documents were. So she did some research to find out who was running Pinkney Housing - a Mr Earl Victors - and followed him around for about a week until she had enough incriminating photographs to convince him to hand over the documents confirming PharmaGoth’s ownership of his company.

Meanwhile, the Bat had also carried out an investigation. Bruce already knew that TYGER - a private security firm that treated its illegal activities as an open secret - was lending out goons to the Red Hood Gang. Connecting TYGER to PharmaGoth might connect Fern to Dr Death. Fortunately, TYGER was based _in_ Gotham, with their headquarters on Arkham Island. Bruce disguised himself, took the monorail to the island, then spent three days casing TYGER’s headquarters before putting on the bat suit and breaking in.

Now, when one pits a group of several dozen elite fighters - who had been discharged from the military for excessive violence - against one man dressed as a nocturnal flying mammal, one has an expectation of the outcome. That was not the outcome here. Sure, Bruce incurred a cut to his left forearm and a bruise over his ribcage (bulletproof armour stops the _bullets_ but not the force of the impact) amongst other injuries, but TYGER’s goons all left the fight nonlethally incapacitated. Not to mention the fact that Bruce got what he’d come for - a copy of the document listing TYGER’s shareholders - Fern had a controlling stock.

A copy he’d made using a convenient photocopier he’d found, to lower the risk of TYGER finding out what he’d been after and destroying all versions of the list except the one he’d stolen.

And so, after just under two weeks of investigations, the Bat and the reporter met up once more and exchanged information. Now all that was left was for the Bat to take down Carl Fern himself and Vale to write the story.

/\\-^|^-/\

Jim Gordon was finally out of hospital. To celebrate, he’d decided to spend his first day after being discharged at a bar with the rest of the Skeleton Crew - an honoured tradition for the five of them. After the crew made several toasts to his quick recovery, Jim used the occasion to break the news about Essen.

“Bullock,” Jim said, gesturing in Harvey’s direction, “already knows this, but while I was at Sacred Heart I got a visit from an Internal Affairs cop. Lieutenant Essen.”

“I’ve heard of her,” Montoya recalled. “One of the few people to transfer to IA who aren’t on the take and nobody ever had her transferred anywhere else because she’s too stubborn to fall in line and too _badass_ to sweep under the rug.”

“I like her already,” Yin replied. She turned to Jim. “So what’d she want?”

“She wants me to help her take down Flass.”

Bennet hit the table with his forehead. “You’ve already said yes, haven’t you?”

When Jim nodded, a chorus of groans arose around the table.

“Jim, none of us mind you wanting to take down Flass,” Montoya said angrily. “But you could at least _tell_ us about the opportunity _before_ you agree to actually do it!”

“I mean, I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d help you,” Yin added. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’ve already dragged us into this before we knew we were being dragged at all.”

“I know,” Jim apologised. “Harvey’s already called me out on this. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it first and I want you all to know you don’t have to get involved if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, we do Jim,” Bennet protested. “It’s _your_ fight, and that makes it our fight.”

Once the matter was settled, the festivities continued for another hour. It was late when the five cops decided it was time for them to go home.

“Looks like I’m stuck being the designated driver for these two,” Montoya said while holding Yin and Bennet up. “Feels good to be the one sober enough to say that for once,” she grinned while escorting her fellow detectives to their cars.

Bullock staggered to his feet and stood next to Jim, trying not to fall.

“Ya don’t have ta’ drive me, Jimbo,” he slurred. “Ma’ home’s within walking dis-” Harvey hiccupped. “Distance of here.” Jim decided to make sure Harvey got home fine anyway.

Once he’d left Harvey in his apartment, Jim walked to his car and turned on the ignition. His first intention was to drive straight home, but then he remembered the last thing Flass had said to him. He turned left.

The drive to Flass’ place was a long one: the crooked cop had made enough money over the years to afford a home in Norchester. Driving over Elliot Bridge and into the suburbs, he replayed the ambush in his head and remembered how Flass had threatened him afterwards. He had to do this.

He knew Flass lived on Miller Terrace. Everyone in the GCPD knew: when he’d moved there, he’d bragged for three weeks about his ‘awesome new place’. Gordon didn’t know the address, but he didn’t need to. He followed the signs until he was on the right street and recognized Flass’ car as it parked in front of the garage of one of the large suburban homes. Gordon pulled over, stepped out of his own car and took his baseball bat out of the trunk.

“Flass!” he yelled.

Flass turned around and grinned when he saw who had followed him. “Gordo! Heard you were out of hospital. Are you seriously looking for another beating already?”

Gordon didn’t answer, he glared. Flass had been a Green Beret. It had been a while since Gordon had fought a Green Beret. He decided Flass deserved to be given a handicap, so he tossed the corrupt cop his baseball bat.

Flass caught it and charged. Gordon stood in wait.

When Flass reached him, he swung his bat. Gordon ducked.

When Flass’ arm had passed over Gordon’s head, Gordon stood up straight, grabbed it and brought his knee crashing into Flass’ elbow - right where it met the humerus.

The part of the arm where the humerus meets the elbow is commonly known as the funny bone, but it is in fact not a bone at all. Nor is it funny, although the choice of that name for an area near a bone called the _humerus_ is an amusing pun. No, the funny bone is actually a nerve that is very close to the skin, and hitting it has been known to cause intense pain. And it did.

Flass’ grip loosened and the bat fell from his hand. Gordon caught it and swung it at his opponent’s midsection.

Flass folded in two and Gordon struck again, swinging at Flass’ kneecaps.

Flass fell to the ground. Gordon had won.

“You _bastard_ ,” Flass cursed. “Loeb will have your badge for this.”

“Really? You’re telling me that he’ll believe that big bad Flass had his ass whooped by the guy he’d beaten up little over a fortnight ago?” Gordon called his bluff. “You’re telling me you’ll admit that? No, knowing you you’re going to make up some story involving at least a dozen attackers.” Gordon kicked Flass between the legs. “But you’ll stay away from my family.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Sutherland Tower loomed above the surrounding apartment blocks. Unlike most towers in Gotham, it had a modern design - instead of being made of the once plentiful granite upon which the city was built, it was made of brick, steel and glass.

On a nearby rooftop, the Bat of the East End was looking up at the tower through a set of binoculars. Having located a vantage point, he took out his grappling hook, clipped the rope onto his belt and anchored the other end by tying it around a metal pipe. The Bat swung the rope onto a ledge - the hook caught - and leapt towards the tower, planting his feet on the brick wall once he reached it. Keeping a strong grip on the rope, and with the assistance of suction pads attached to his boots, he made his way up the building.

Having made his way up the sheer face of the building, the Bat climbed up onto the penthouse garden. He unclipped the rope from his belt, but left it where it was in case he needed to make a quick getaway, then cautiously surveyed the penthouse through the floor-to-ceiling window.

Unseen by the Bat, two gunmen lay in wait. When he picked the lock on the window and stepped inside, they leapt out from their hiding places and started firing at him. The gunshots lit up the room.

The hired killers may have been skilled, but they failed to account for the Bat’s speed and agility. The vigilante darted across the room and knocked one man down by pushing a marble bust over onto him. The other was incapacitated by a flash grenade thrown by the Bat, attacking the gunmen’s eyes and ears while leaving the Bat unaffected. He’d taken care to wear protective lenses and headphones.

The Bat knew he had to be quick. The noise would have attracted more attention than he needed - and he had no intention of allowing Carl Fern to escape. He also knew that if the gunmen had been waiting, Fern must have realised somebody was coming after him. He opened the door and stepped into a room that appeared to be a laboratory.

Had it not been for the Bat’s headphones, he would have heard the words “Jaya, fire!” As it was, he did not hear what was said - although he did hear that something _had been_ said - but he did see a broad-shouldered figure twist around and draw a revolver.

The Bat rolled to the side, took a rebreather from his belt and placed it in his mouth, then took out a smoke pellet and threw it to the ground. The smoke filled the room and left Jaya blind. The Bat threw a haymaker at Jaya, then jumped back when the larger man swung at him in response. Jaya charged and the Bat flipped him onto his back, grabbed his leg and twisted it. The pain was enough to get Jaya to stop fighting long enough for the Bat to tie him up.

That just left Fern himself. As the smoke cleared, the Bat could make out Fern’s voice yelling a taunt: “You _fool_! You will never catch _Doctor Death_!”

Looking in the direction of the voice, the Bat saw a balding man in a lab coat leap down a chute in the floor. As the automatic trapdoor closed, the Bat jammed a wrench in the chute to keep it open enough for him to follow Fern wherever it lead.

Fern fell onto a mattress positioned directly underneath the chute two floors below the penthouse and frantically made his escape into a second laboratory. The Bat soon followed, pursuing relentlessly. In an effort to stop the Bat in his track, Fern took out a box of matches and started opening the gas taps. As the Bat ran into the room and wrenched a fire extinguisher off the wall, Fern laughed.

“You’ll never escape your fiery death!” he mocked the Bat while taking out a match.

The Bat simply hit Fern in the head with the metal canister, closed the gas taps and dragged Fern out of the lab and into a lounge. He placed Fern’s unconscious form on a sofa and restrained him with zip ties, then took out a disposable phone, texted Alfred.

/\\-^|^-/\

Alfred gave an anonymous tip to the GCPD about Carl Fern. Vale had already provided Gordon with the evidence, so when he heard that Carl Fern had been attacked by the Bat he made sure to be the one on the scene. Fern and his men were arrested, jailed and convicted. In exchange for a slightly shorter sentence, Fern agreed to give Gordon the names of the remaining Red Hood lieutenants.

Bruce’s haymaker had left him with a bruised knuckle. Nothing serious, but Alfred insisted on making sure that he hadn’t incurred any damage to his bones. Bruce, taking account of his various injuries, began to consider making modifications to the suit: an arm guard to stop blades, or padding to absorb the kinetic energy from impacts. He’d have to put that off, however, since a more pressing concern would be developing some sort of grappling gun to make ascending tall buildings easier.

Vale and Knox ran an article on the Bat: it consisted of an overview of what they’d found in their investigations and a transcript of Vale’s interview with the vigilante. It made headline news and was the best-selling paper the Gazette had printed in _years_.

Essen couldn’t say she approved of Gordon’s confrontation with Flass, but given the circumstances she couldn’t fault him for it either.

Over the next few weeks, the GCPD would hunt down the remaining Red Hood leaders - although some of them were wise enough to skip town. Meanwhile, Bruce was considering the next step in The Mission.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter revolves around a serial killer and the ending takes place at a school. If you have any traumatic experiences that reading this could remind you of, please do not read this chapter.

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**5 Years Ago**

Night had fallen on the favelas. Rio - in the distance - shone like a light luring moths to their deaths. Given what most of the people who had come to the city in search of a better life had found upon arrival, the comparison was apt.

Bruce, however, was not currently interested in being poetic. No, all he was interested in was training. Maestre had agreed to teach him what she knew about capoeira and about fighting without sight, so now he was blindfolded on the mountainside, he and Maestre circling each other, navigating only by the sound of each other’s footsteps.

They’d been at this for some time now. Bruce had the cuts and scratches on his shins and hands to prove it - he’d fallen on the rocky slope more than once, even when Maestre hadn’t knocked him to the ground.

He was starting to get better, though. He heard the sound of air being displaced and new Maestre had lashed out with a kick.

Bruce leapt backwards.

He landed, stuck his arms outwards to regain his balance.

It didn’t work. He fell backwards and rolled down the hillside. He could feel the pointed stones cutting new wounds in his back. They’d heal, and most of them wouldn’t leave scars, but it was still embarrassing.

He was fortunate enough to reach a flat ledge on the hill, wide enough for him to come to a stop. The impact hurt anyway. He got to his feet.

He heard the shuffle of stones as Maestre sprinted expertly down the mountainside.

“ _The Lord blessed me when he took my sight,_ ” she said. “ _Which gives me an advantage you cannot attain. But that doesn’t mean you cannot learn._ ” She waited for Bruce to get to his feet. “ _The old philosophers said we have five senses. They were wrong: we have eighteen, at the least. Seventeen, in my case. And one of those seventeen is balance._ ”

Bruce thought there was something unfair about the possibly superhuman ninja lecturing him about a sense of balance, but he listened and he kept his blindfold on.

“ _If you do not get those wounds treated, they will become infected and you will fall ill. Or, you will bleed too much and slip. You will fall, you will bleed more and you will faint. Pain is another sense, and useful as it is to ignore it, it is not wise to do so when you are seeking danger,”_ Maestre lectured Bruce. _“You will go to my house,”_ she stated. _“There is a first aid kit behind the board on the wall. Use it. Then come back here. You will remain on this hillside until you learn balance. Understood?_ ”

“ _Yes, Maestre,_ ” Bruce replied. If there was something he had to learn, he would learn it.

And he did.

Eventually.

It took him a week to get it right, though.

**Gotham City, USA**

**Present Day**

“Oh for God’s sake, can’t they get someone else to do it?.. I’ve been working overtime for the past week, I’ve earned some time off… fine, I’ll be there tomorrow.” The middle-aged blonde woman hung up her phone and muttered “screw you, assholes.” She got back to eating her burger.

Two tables behind her, a pale man wearing a hoodie sat alone, watching the handful of other people in the restaurant. Right now, his gaze was fixed on the one who had been on the phone. He could see the frustration on her face.

The woman stood up from her table and walked out. She didn’t see the pale man following her, didn’t look back until the man had taken a left turn into an alley.

The woman walked on until she saw a cab on the road. She hailed the driver.

The taxi pulled up in front of her and the driver rolled down the window. “Where to?”

“Number 3, Breyfogle Avenue.”

“You got the money for that?”

The woman dug around in her purse, swearing until she pulled out her wallet. “Yeah. I got the money. You gonna take me there, or not?”

“Sure. Get in.”

She opened the rear door of the taxi, then heard the sounds of a struggle behind her. She turned her head to see a pale man in a hoodie attacking some guy in a Big Belly Burger uniform. Hell, it might have been the guy who’d taken her order.

She got into a cab. This was Gotham after all, and that fight was none of her business.

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon and Bullock got out of the police car and approached the cops who were already searching the crime scene.

“What have we got?” Gordon asked.

“The vic’s name is Zach Riley. He worked at Big Belly Burger and he was found by a homeless man who’d tried to mug him.”

“He… tried to mug a dead body?”

“He didn’t realise Riley was dead. He said he’d been posed, so he looked like he was carrying a tray of food. That’s what he’d been trying to mug him for.”

“Posing the vic?” Bullock said. “Doesn’t that usually mean remorse?”

Gordon shook his head. “It means remorse when the vic’s in a defensive position, or with his arms crossed. This… this is different.” He turned to Montoya again. “You said he worked at Big Belly Burger?”

“He was a waiter,” Montoya nodded.

“Then posing him as if he was carrying the tray… the killer’s trying to recreate what the vic looked like when he was doing his job. It could be symbolic.”

“You think the killer’s making fun of the vic’s job?” Bullock wondered.

“I think he or she’s making fun of the vic’s _life_.” It was a hunch. Gordon trusted his hunches more often than not. And this one was an _educated_ hunch. “Anything else off about the crime scene?” he asked Montoya. One of the best ways to find out more about the killer was to look at the weird stuff.

“Yeah, couple of things. Like how nothing was taken - the vic was found with his wallet on him, money, credit card - usually even the psychos who do this for fun take trophies. And then there’s the blood. The vic’s throat was slit - we’d expect the blood to be all over the walls, based on the blood pressure there. And it _is_ ,” she said, gesturing at the alley wall with red splashes all over it, that were being photographed and sampled by forensic scientists. “But there’s also blood on the ground, and judging by the pattern _there_ , it didn’t come from the victim.”

“The _killer_ was wounded?” Gordon asked. “You mean the vic fought back?”

“That’s what I _did_ think at first. But after I got a good look at the blood, I noticed something: the only blood on the victim’s body or clothes was his own. It might be nothing, but I’ve got a feeling it’s something.”

Gordon took this in. “So he’s posing the victims as a mockery of their lives, but he’s not taking trophies and we don’t know for sure how he was wounded. This might be a tough one.”

“Victims?” Bullock asked. “Plural? That’s just one guy, Jim. The killer didn’t cut deep enough to make it two.”

“This kind of behaviour, if it’s not plural already it’s going to be,” Gordon explained. “Montoya, I want you to keep one ear on the ground - if anything like this comes up, let me know.” Gordon turned to the rest of the Skeleton Crew, who had now gathered around him. “Yin, you should look into any recent killings. Look at police reports, bodies at the morgue, even hospital admissions if you can: we need to know if this is the killer’s first victim, and if not how long he’s been at this. Bennet, keep an eye on what the media says about this. We don’t want any copycats that we might get mixed up with the original, but if the killer’s the one talking to the media, we’ll need to know as soon as possible.” Gordon turned to face Bullock again. “Bullock, I want you to ask around. See if anyone out there’s seen anything that might help us with this. As for me, I’ll be trying to put together a profile of the killer.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent was working in his white-walled office; he had a stack of files on his black wooden desk, each for a specific case. What Harvey had to do was find those cases which he could get a successful conviction out of; this was not as easy as it seemed since his boss was too much of a coward to stand up to the criminals of Gotham.

There was a knock on the door, so he said “come in”. Lieutenant Sarah Essen entered his office.

They greeted each other and shook hands, then Harvey invited Sarah to take a seat. “I have some good news: we’ve got a chance to take down Flass,” she said.

Harvey raised an eyebrow. “How good of a chance?”

“Damn good,” Sarah replied. “A cop called James Gordon - hates Flass, loves the badge.”

“Gordon, huh? I heard about him - war hero who joined the force, then got kicked to the Narrows for causing trouble, right?”

“Yep. He’s been butting heads with Flass, and here’s the thing: I already talked to him and he’s agreed to help us.”

Harvey flipped a coin, catching it in his palm. He looked at it.

“Heads. Once I’ve got Finch off my back, I’ll call you to arrange a meeting with Gordon,” Harvey promised.

Harvey and Sarah stood up and shook hands. “Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later,” Sarah said.

They exchanged goodbyes and Sarah left. Harvey sat down at his desk again and continued looking through the files.

He was placing them into two groups. One was for the cases that the DA’s office could get a conviction out of, the other for the cases that they _should_ get a conviction out of.

/\\-^|^-/\

Outside of the GCPD station, a grey van pulled up just out of sight. The windows were tinted so onlookers could not see that sitting next to the grey-haired driver was a man dressed as a bat. In the seat behind them was a seventeen-year-old boy.

“I still think you’re bloody crazy, bringing a child into this,” the grey-haired man said to the man in the costume.

“I’m not a child!” the boy behind them snapped. “And who the hell are you anyway?”

“I’m the butler, lad. The bat man’s batman.”

John Blake scoffed.

“I’m bringing him into this because we need to know what the GCPD knows and he has the best chance of getting into the precinct without any trouble,” the Bat said to his butler. “You remember the plan, right?” he asked the boy.

“I walk in, if anyone stops me I do that whole ‘lost child’ act, I break into the incident room and plant those bugs you gave me. This is the first time I’ve had to _leave_ something somewhere without anyone noticing.”

“The skill sets involved aren’t too different,” the costumed man encouraged him. The only part you might have to worry about is hiding them so they won’t be found, and I know you can do that.”

John nodded, got out of the van and turned the corner towards the station.

Upon entering the precinct, he noted that it was exactly what he’d expected. Hectic and loud. To his left, he could see a detective pushing a suspect onto a desk, yelling at the ‘punk’ to stay down. Further ahead, a guy with a mohawk was trying to convince a beat cop that he’d only robbed two of the banks that were hit, and to the right an old woman with dark glasses was complaining about someone sneaking gerbils into her apartment.

He was only stopped once and the cop left him alone after he made up a story about his dad getting drunk and leaving. Once he was in the corridors, there were few enough people that if he heard somebody approaching he could just hide around the corner. After a few minutes, he reached the incident room. The door was locked.

He looked around to make sure there was nobody approaching, pressed his ear to the glass in the door to check if there was anyone inside, then knelt down in front of the door and took out a paperclip. Once he unwound the metal wire, he started picking the lock, listening for the sound of a tumbler falling.

He was there a while - at one point he heard footsteps and panicked, yanked the wire out of the lock and hid in a janitor’s closet, hoping the person approaching wasn’t a janitor, after the person had passed, John thanked goodness they hadn’t tried to open the door John had been working at - but eventually, the last tumbler fell and the lock clicked.

He opened the door slowly, then snuck into the room. Directly in front of him was a cork board with pictures of the crime scene pinned to it. He took out the camera the Bat had given him (‘you can keep it kid. You never know when it’ll come in handy’) and took a photo of it. Then another, from a different angle. He was no photographer, but he figured that a third angle would be enough, so he took that one too then pocketed the camera in his jacket again.

The bugs were in his jacket too. One by one, he took them out and hid them somewhere. In the plant pot, the microphone _just_ poking out of the dirt, but obscured by the leaves. Behind the cabinet, the suction pad would keep it attached to the wall. Under the table, held in place by a magnet. (Good thing parts of the table were made of… _some_ sort of steel. Not the regular kind or the stainless kind, but steel anyway.) In the lamp suspended from the ceiling - that had been a tricky one, he’d had to stand on the table to reach it. And the last one - that he’d managed to stuff into a gap between two floorboards, hoping nobody would notice it because said gap was underneath the table.

Once he was done, John snuck out of the room, closing the door behind him.

/\\-^|^-/\

The businessman got out of the cab, his suitcase in one hand and his phone in the other. He was talking with somebody, and he was stressed.

“Look, I made a bad deal but are you forgetting everything I’ve done for this company?” He spoke into the phone. “Let me fix this!.. I’ve got the papers with me now…” As he walked towards his apartment block, he didn’t notice a pale man in a hoodie sprinting towards him, a knife in his hand.

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon, Bullock, Bennet and Yin were in the incident room. Gordon was standing next to the board, facing his fellow detectives, who were sitting around the table. They’d pinned photographs and photocopies of the evidence to the board.

“You were right, Jim,” Yin said. “The killer’s been at this a while. The first killing with this MO that I could find was a homeless guy who was found posed so he looked like he was brandishing a knife. After that, there’ve been at least seven victims.”

“Any links between them?” Gordon asked.

“They all have mundane lives - beyond that, nada. One was a taxi driver, another one was a nurse, there was a teacher, an accountant, a lawyer, an office clerk, then the waiter we found. No links between their careers and as far as I could tell there’s no location linking them in the days leading up to their murders.”

“So the killer is nomadic. How far apart are the kills?”

“The first few were half a week apart, on average. Since then, the deaths have been daily.”

Bullock leaned forwards. “Perp’s accelerating. If we take too long, we’ll have a spree killer on our hands.”

“Which is why it’s important that we figure out how this guy thinks, and how they finds their victims. If the link is that they all have mundane and frustrating lives, then that means the killer had to spend enough time near them to figure that out, so it will be more than just passing them in the streets. Bullock, is anybody saying anything about the killer?”

“I’ve heard a few things,” Bullock replied. “I asked Yin for details on the earlier victims, so I could ask about them too. Turns out, a few people have actually seen the killer attacking the victims. They all gave the same description: pale, wears a hoodie and long sleeves, apparently male. Some of them actually saw him walking away after he’d killed his victims. They said his arms were bleeding.”

“You mean him getting wounded wasn’t a one-off?” asked Bennet. “If it’s a ritual - if he’s doing this to himself - that _could_ be why he didn’t take any trophies. The _scars_ are his trophies,” he speculated. “Or a punishment.”

“Makes sense,” said Gordon. “And it gives us some ideas of how he _might_ think. If the scars are trophies, he’s keeping count. He probably sees killing as some sort of mission and going after people who are frustrated with their jobs gives us a clue of what kind of mission it is: ‘freeing’ everyone from their lives. But if the scars were a punishment, he’d have shown remorse in other ways too.” Gordon paused. “This kind of thing doesn’t just start from nowhere. He’d have had mental health problems before whatever his trigger was made him start killing.”

“Serial killers tend to start with animals,” Yin said. “If he’s posing his victims now, he might have done that with dead animals when he was younger.”

“That will be something to look into,” said Gordon. “Bennet, does the media know anything?”

Bennet shook his head. “They’re even more in the dark than we are.”

At that moment, Montoya entered the room.

“I came here as soon as I knew for sure,” she said. “There’s been another killing. I visited the crime scene and it fits the MO.”

/\\-^|^-/\

After having inspected the crime scene, Gordon got a call from Essen. She told him to be at the DA’s office just before noon the next day.

And just before noon, he arrived. Essen was waiting for him in the lobby.

“Good morning, Sergeant Gordon,” she greeted him.

“Morning,” he responded. “Lieutenant Essen, can I ask what this is about?”

She stepped closer to him. “There’s an ADA here who’s helping me clean up the GCPD,” she whispered. “I’m taking you to meet him.”

“What’s this ADA’s name?” Gordon asked as Essen led him to an office door.

“Harvey Dent,” she replied as she knocked.

The door opened. Gordon followed Essen inside.

The first thing he noticed was the colour: the walls, floor and ceiling were white, the desk and chairs were black. He turned and shook hands with the man who had opened the door.

“Sergeant Gordon, I presume. Sarah tells me you’re a good cop,” he said.

He was wearing a black two-piece suit with a white shirt; he had a black tie and his hair was shaved close to his scalp. “One of the few in this city who are willing to enforce the law.”

“She also tells me that you’re a good attorney,” Jim responded. “One of the few.”

Harvey Dent laughed. “Well, I suppose we both have problematic co-workers,” he said as he closed the door.

“Sit down, both of you,” he continued. “It’s time to talk business.”

Jim and Sarah both sat down in front of Harvey’s desk. Harvey sat in his own chair, so that he was facing them.

He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a stack of files. “Now, as I’m sure you know, there are a few key individuals responsible for the continued corruption in this city.”

“I’d say there’s more to it than that,” Jim replied. “But there are three on the force who stand out.”

“Exactly - and Flass is one of them. The other two are Commissioner Loeb and Captain Branden.”

“Branden’s a loose cannon, and he’s got SWAT backing him up, so taking him down will be difficult,” Essen explained. “But Loeb and Flass are both easier targets - especially Flass.”

“We prove Flass is dirty,” Harvey said, “and he’ll turn on Loeb in a heartbeat to save his own ass. He’ll give us evidence against Loeb and probably a lot of other corrupt cops on the force - hopefully, that will include Branden.”

“Flass is the keystone, Gordon,” Essen said. “With your help, we can take him down and clean up the GCPD in one fell swoop.”

“So that’s the plan?” Gordon asked. “How exactly are we gonna take Flass down in the first place?”

“That,” Harvey replied, pointing at Jim. “Is where you come in.”

“You’ve taken down a _lot_ of drug dealers in a short amount of time, and that pissed Flass off,” Essen reminded Gordon. Keep doing that and eventually one of them will be willing to testify against Flass.”

“I had ‘help’ with that,” Gordon pointed out. “But it’s a good plan, and I’m willing to go for it.”

“Actually,” Essen said. “That ‘help’ you had is another reason I brought you in: the Bat trusts you, and he could be a valuable ally.”

“I’ll see if I can get in touch with him,” Gordon replied. “But he’s not exactly jumping at the chance to meet face-to-face, so it might be difficult.”

Having decided on a plan of action, the three of them agreed to meet again in two days, then exchanged goodbyes. Jim walked out of the office, then out of the building.

Essen exited after him. “You sure you don’t need a ride?” she asked him.

“Nah,” Jim said. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll just take…”

And then, like something out of an episode of _House_ , he realised it: how the killer he’d been investigating had been finding his victims. “A taxi.”

/\\-^|^-/\

The taxi navigated the streets of Gotham, travelling downtown to the richer neighbourhoods. Here too, the cars and pedestrians were symptoms of the repetitive lives the people lived. In the back of the taxi, the middle-aged socialite was arguing with her teenage daughter. The driver didn’t listen to their argument.

He pulled up at destination he’d been given. It was a school – the semester was about to begin. The mother and daughter got out of the car, still arguing.

As the driver looked at all the wealthy people in their expensive cars dropping their children off at the expensive private school, he drove off. When he had gone far enough, he turned around.

/\\-^|^-/\

“Yin, you said one of the first victims was a taxi driver?” Gordon asked. “Do we know what happened to his taxi?”

“I tried to find out,” she said. “But the taxi company he worked for never reported a missing cab and they wouldn’t talk to me unless I had a warrant.”

“Ask them again. I think the killer’s been using that victim’s taxi to find new victims, so tell them that if they don’t co-operate, we’ll come down on them like the hammer of God for putting people’s lives at risk.”

“I’ll be sure to use those exact words,” Yin said. “Their taxis are supposed to be fitted with tracking devices, so if we know the number of the taxi we can track the killer.”

“Gordon,” Bennet approached the sergeant. “I think I know the killer’s name. _Victor Zsasz_.”

“What do we know about him?” Gordon asked.

“His family was rich, but after he inherited their fortune he lost it all gambling. That seems like it could be a trigger. And before that - when he was a kid - there were rumors that he’d killed a few beloved family pets and posed them to look like they were playing.”

“Fits the profile,” Gordon said. “Good work. Now that we have an idea of who he is, we might be able to predict what he’ll do.”

/\\-^|^-/\    

A squad of police cars was outside of Gotham Academy. Gordon had put a dispatch out on the taxi Zsasz was using and someone had seen that taxi near the school. Then there’d been a 911 call from inside the school: the killer was already inside and had killed at least one student. Upon arriving at the scene, Gordon had immediately given out commands to the other cops.

“We’ve got to take that monster down before he kills anyone else, but what’s more important right now is to get everybody out of that school,” he’d said. “We’ll need to get inside without alerting Zsasz to the fact that we’ve found a way in, so we’ll be going in through the south window.”

And that was what they’d done. Once they were inside, the five of them had split up, going around the school and making sure that every student and staff member ended up in the canteen. Bullock and Gordon had barricaded all doors but one and, to protect the civilians, the Skeleton Crew chose Bullock to stay in the canteen at all times. Protecting kids was the one thing about the job that Bullock always took seriously. The other four cops continued to search the school, both for any students or staff and for the killer.

/\\-^|^-/\

Detective Renee Montoya was searching the west wing of the school, with both hands on her gun in case she came across the killer. As the corridor turned left, Montoya saw somebody by one of the classroom doors, knees pulled up to the chest, sitting in the fetal position.

Montoya approached. “Are you okay?” she asked. There was no answer. “My name is Renee,” she continued. “I’m here to-” she stopped. She was near enough now to see that the student’s throat had been slit. He’d _posed_ the body like that - the monster was mocking his victims for being afraid now.

Montoya noticed something: The body had been posed to face another door, leading to another corridor. Montoya stepped through the door and found a second body, posed towards a third door.

“This is Montoya,” she spoke into her radio. “The killer’s leaving us breadcrumbs. Either it’s a trap or he wants us to fight him. Whichever it is, I might need backup. I’m near the biology lab. Over.”

“This is Yin,” her fellow detective’s voice came through the speaker. “That’s not far from where I am. I’m on my way. Over.”

Once the two met up, Montoya showed Yin how each body was posed to point to the next.

“So,” Yin said. “We follow the bodies, we find the killer.”

“Exactly.”

The trail of corpses led them through the corridors. The third corpse they’d found had been looking upwards and had been placed in front of a stairway. The fourth corpse, at the top of the stairs, was faced towards the double doors. All of a sudden, the sounds of a fight started up on the other side of the doors. Yin and Montoya burst in, yelling “freeze!” simultaneously, and saw the killer they’d been chasing fighting the Bat of the East End.

Montoya and Yin yelled “freeze!” simultaneously. The Bat had just landed a hit to his opponent’s diaphragm and now stepped back and put his hands up.

“I’m on your side, detectives,” he said. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

The two detectives approached the costumed man and the killer.

Yin was sceptical. “You’re a vigilante. That’s not our side.”

“We’re all fighting for this city. And we all want to see killers like him,” the Bat gestured towards the bald man, “behind bars.”

At that moment, Zsasz, his breath back, lashed out at Montoya with his knife. Montoya stepped back and when Zsasz charged towards her, sidestepped out of the way, seized his wrist and twisted his arm. The pain, combined with Yin pointing her gun at the killer, convinced him to stop struggling. Montoya cuffed the man and Yin spoke into her radio.

“We’ve got the bastard,” she said. “Bennet, you were right – it’s Zsasz.”

Victor Zsasz was bare-chested and had blood running down both of his arms.

None of them had noticed that the Bat had already left.

/\\-^|^-/\

“John,” the Bat said.

John turned to look at the visitor. “The cops caught him.”

“That’s true.”

The Bat continued looking at John, and the boy exhaled. “And I can’t help thinking that if we’d done more, we’d have caught him sooner.”

“I know, John. I think the same thing, every day. Some days… some days, we can’t save everyone. And the people you can’t save, they stay with you forever.”

“How do you cope with that?”

“I keep going. I remind myself of every life I’ve saved, and hope that one day the weight of the lives saved will balance the weight of the lives lost. I mourn every life lost as if they were someone I loved. And I remind myself to try harder next time, because as long as I keep going there will be a next time. It’s not an ideal solution, John, but it’s the best we’ve got.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Victor Zsasz had killed eleven people. Six of them had been killed at Gotham Academy – one teacher and five students. Two days after the attack, a vigil was held for the victims. Hundreds of people were there. Every member of the Skeleton Crew attended. And, though only two others knew it, the Bat of the East End was there too, alongside John and Alfred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I intended this chapter to focus on Bruce, like the others, but it didn't turn out that way. As for Zsasz attacking the school, that was inspired by part of Knightfall. That said, I don't plan on writing about a school getting attacked again anytime soon: it's not for personal reasons, but writing this made me realise that I don't feel comfortable writing about such topics.


	6. Chapter Six

Alfred Pennyworth walked into the apartment carrying a cardboard box. “That Blake kid got the bugs back from the station,” he said, setting the box down on the counter.

“Tell him I said thanks,” Bruce replied as he pulverized the dark grey punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

“So, you’ve taken down the Red Hoods and by now all of their lieutenants are either behind bars or skipping town,” Alfred said. “What next?”

“I think it’s time for the Bat to move beyond the East End,” Bruce said, kicking the punching bag. “So the next stage of the Mission will mean going for the big fish.”

“Falcone?” Alfred said. “I’m impressed. I thought you were bloody reckless before, but you’ve managed to surprise me. You want to take down the sodding real-life Vito Corleone?”

“Thanks Alfred, it’s good to know you support my life choices.”

“Oh, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it. I’m just saying, you better have a plan.”

“I do have a plan,” Bruce replied as he delivered an uppercut to his ‘opponent’. “The first step will be bringing Matches Malone back to life.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Assistant District Attorney Dawes had made a strong case against Julian Day. She’d laid out all of the damning evidence against him, then proceeded to destroy his insanity plea with the help of Dr Strange: the former profiler had pointed out that while Day may well be a sociopath, he was very much aware of what he was doing. Dawes had allowed herself to think that she had this in the bag.

Then the defence had brought out Doctor Quincy Sharp.

“It is clear to me,” the bullet-headed man had said, “that, no matter what a former _profiler_ \- and we all know how reliable that discipline is - might say, Mr Day was _not_ in control of his own actions when he committed those murders. It is my _professional_ recommendation that he be placed in the psychiatric wing of Arkham Penitentiary, for the safety of _both_ himself _and_ the people around him.”

And that speech had ruined everything. The unfounded dig at profilers amused the jury, the man’s reputation meant he already had the juror’s respect, and his charismatic voice and calculated use of emphasis had made his argument more convincing.

And so Julian Gregory “Calendar Man” Day had been found legally insane and the families of his victims were denied justice.

Rachel Dawes could _not_ let that stand.

She cornered the psychologist outside of the courtroom.

“Dr Sharp!” she called to get his attention.

“Yes, Ms Dawes, are you looking for advice on how to find _genuine_ psychiatrists?”

“Actually, no. I was wondering if you find anything suspicious about the fact that this is the _fifth_ serial killer tied to Falcone who you’ve decided is insane.”

“Well, criminal behaviour is commonly associated with the insane for a _reason_ , Ms Dawes.”

“It’s also commonly associated with the corrupt for a reason, Dr Sharp.”

Sharp tensed up. “I’d be careful of what you’re implying, attorney,” he hissed.

“And _I’d_ be careful of who you let line your pockets,” Dawes responded.

/\\-^|^-/\

Lieutenant Essen’s phone buzzed. She read the text from Gordon.

‘Essen.

The dive bar at 4th and Grundy.

0600

The whole crew will be there.’

Eleven hours later, Essen arrived at 4th and Grundy. Like most of midtown Gotham, the building was a Pinkneyan skyscraper, all granite and grotesques (not gargoyles). In front of the block, stairs descended into the ground, stopping at a blue door with a crude drawing of a pig on it.

Refuge in audacity. Well, that answered the question of why the Skeleton Crew would meet here.

She entered the bar and saw that it was a quiet establishment – the drinkers were rowdy, but there weren’t enough of them to classify the bar as loud. Gordon and the others were smart enough not to want to be overheard, so Essen figured they’d be somewhere louder than the rest of the bar. The actual bar was not an option – too much space behind their backs that could be used for eavesdropping – which meant they had to have gathered somewhere near the walls.

Essen looked towards the tables next to the jukebox, both of which were right in front of the wall. Sure enough, she saw Gordon, Bullock and three other cops at the left table.

She joined them and introductions were made over the punk rock emanating from the juke box. She recognised the song – Illegal Rebellion by Crowe and the Murders, back before the face of the band had gone solo.

“Lieutenant Essen, these are Detectives Montoya,” Gordon gestured to a dark-haired Hispanic woman, “Yin,” an Asian woman wearing a red leather jacket, “and Bennet,” a short-haired African-American man. “You already know Bullock.” The detective in question raised his glass. “Everybody, this is Lieutenant Essen.”

And for the next forty-five minutes, the six of them sat at that table – the first five minutes discussing the plan to take down Flass, the next forty were spent trading anecdotes.

That was how Essen came to know the Skeleton Crew. She’d read their files, of course, but reading about a person doesn’t exactly give you an impression of who they are.

Montoya’s file said that she was the eldest of five siblings and shared her apartment block with her entire immediate family, including nieces, nephews, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents. It didn’t say that she was not on good terms with some of the older members, although she didn’t elaborate why.

Yin’s file had said she lived alone and focused on her work, but didn’t say that she’d put up with the frankly demeaning duties and low pay of an honest cop in Gotham despite having the skills and opportunities – she’d apparently received numerous offers from private investigating and security firms – to do so much better.

Bennet’s file mentioned that he was living with and taking care of his mother, and that after Ethan Bennet Sr. had died, the Bennet family had received help from the Wayne Foundation, but Essen was completely surprised to find out that Ethan Jr. had actually become friends with Bruce Wayne (although they’d grown apart over the years following the latter becoming an orphan) or that he regularly returned to his old neighbourhood to help people out.

Other things the files had neglected to mention was how Gordon still sometimes felt guilty about thinking of Barbara as his daughter and not his niece, or how Bullock had a girlfriend he’d met at a support group – they kept in touch after they completed the program and started dating after a few weeks.

When the conversation turned to the Bat of the East End, Montoya approved of the vigilante’s actions while Yin was sceptical of his intentions. It made sense to Essen when she remembered what their files had said of their backgrounds. Both of them had grown up poor and both of them had relatives who turned to crime as a result. But Montoya’s relatives were either not arrested or falsely arrested, while Yin’s mother ended up being jailed for drug trafficking, and her father was shot at an underground nightclub after he assaulted a bouncer. So Montoya grew up seeing how the law and justice were not the same thing, while Yin grew up seeing the consequences breaking the law could have.

Bennet thought the Bat was a good person, but he’d be better off being a cop. Bennet’s father had been one of the few good cops in Gotham and was still considered a pillar of the community in Agga, fifteen years after his death at the hands of a heroin dealer.

Bullock thought the Bat was a maniac and going to get himself killed – and if he was going to take down a few criminal scumbags along the way, why stop him? Bullock’s parents divorced after his father was conned into giving up their life savings, which gave Bullock a reason to resent criminals, but years on the job in Gotham had taught him that the audacity of hope was not always a good thing.

Gordon wanted to make an alliance with the Bat. He believed that the GCPD should serve the people and since the Bat seemed to be doing the same thing, they should help each other and earn Gotham’s respect together. His father had been the best mayor Gotham had seen since Linseed’s social programs fell to waste, and he’d made sure to pass his famous undying idealism onto his son.

And Essen? She just thought the Bat clearly had skills, fought for justice and was willing to work with the cops. That made him a useful ally – or a useful tool – in the fight against people like Loeb, Flass or Branden. She wondered what that said about her. What connections might someone draw between her origin story and her pragmatic opinions on the masked vigilante?

/\\-^|^-/\

Romano Vitti had a buzz cut and was wearing a black leather jacket. He surveyed the Iceberg Lounge and Casino, saw the man he’d been told about and sat down across the table from him.

“Malone, right?”

“That’s the name,” the blond man said. “People call me Matches.”

“What did you do to earn _that_ name?”

“I told some punks who tried to mug me that I set a guy on fire for taking my wallet,” he shrugged.

“And did you?” That was an important question.

“Nah, I made it up,” Matches laughed. “Scared the crap outta them, though.”

That was good. It meant this wasn’t someone with a short temper, but he could tell a convincing lie if he had to.  That was the kind of person he needed. “So, I heard you were looking for a job?”

“Yeah, see I used to have a job with the Red Hood Gang, but…”

“The Bat?”

“The f***ing Bat!”

“My condolences,” Romano said. “But you’re in luck. My organisation has a job opening. We need someone to transport our products around the city.”

“What kind of products?”

“Heroin, crack, acid and weed. Not Venom, though.”

Matches looked thoughtful. “Sure,” he decided. “I’m in. Just one thing: what is your organisation? I need to know who I’m working for.”

Romano smiled. “The Falcone crime family, my friend.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“What _the hell_ are you doing?” Alfred asked as he entered the Bunker, closing the steel door behind him.

“I’m testing the firing mechanism,” Bruce replied, staring at the computer screen. “I set it up outside, and I’ve lined the tunnel with targets that the hook will hit when it starts to fall. The impact will knock the target over, turning a switch and sending a signal to the computer that will tell me how far the hook had travelled before it started falling.” He pressed a button, firing the line remotely.

They could hear the bang through the brick and the steel. Then the computer beeped.

“Seven stories’ worth,” Bruce read out. “That’s the best result yet.” He still had to figure out how to _set_ the grappling gun, and he hadn’t put together the motor that would pull the line in - or the gun _up_ \- yet, but this was a good start.

/\\-^|^-/\

For his first two weeks as a member of the Falcone crime family, Matches Malone was merely driving the trucks and delivering drugs to various storehouses. It didn’t take long for his performance to be noticed: he was punctual, he knew his way around the city, and he was able to haggle with the cops, convincing them to accept much lower bribes than usual (still high, but the profit was noticeable).

Then one of his superiors in the family’s hierarchy was revealed to have been taking a greater cut of the profits than he was supposed to. That weekend, that superior went on a fishing trip and Carmine Falcone decided to make it a _permanent_ fishing trip. And so, during the third week, Matches was promoted and placed in charge of _planning_ the shipments. With his surprisingly powerful brain for someone who’d flunked out of high school, he excelled at his new job even more and soon found himself rising through the ranks again.

As he was promoted, he became privy to new information about the workings of the crime family. He found out that Carmine Falcone kept a notebook in which he wrote down his various ‘appointments’ - shipments, deals and meetings judged important enough for Falcone to get involved personally.

Matches also learned that Falcone had at least a dozen guards follow him wherever he went, and they were all armed. In some cases, he also brought along additional guards who he expected to arm themselves, but his security detail, led by a former Marine called Milo Grappa, was the bigger threat.

After a month in the employ of Carmine Falcone, Matches found himself placed among the additional guards. He’d recently beaten the crap out of a dumbass who decided it would be a good idea to steal drugs from his own boss, and considering how tough the dumbass had been, that impressed Falcone. And, since he was holding a meeting with his fellow mob bosses to discuss some pressing issues, he needed more than just his usual detail.

/\\-^|^-/\

Frankie was standing outside of Commissioner Loeb’s mansion. He’d been assigned to guard duty by Falcone, who’d chosen this place to hold a summit with his fellow mob bosses in Gotham. Falcone was smart enough to put his guards in teams of two, but this meant that Frankie got stuck with the new guy – some punk from New Jersey calling himself Matches Malone.

They were guarding the east wing of the mansion, stood in front of an unreasonably large window. Frankie was smoking a cigarette.

“Those things will kill you, you know,” Malone said.

“Ah, shut up.”

There was a thud in the distance. It had come from the direction of the garden wall.

“Hey Matches, make yourself useful,” Frankie said. “Go over there and see who got dumb enough to try to break in.”

“Why don’t you do it?” Matches asked.

“Because,” Frankie replied slowly and patronisingly, “I’m the one with the Tommy gun, and all you have is a revolver that I don’t think I’ve even seen you use.”

“Fine, I’ll go.” And go he did. Frankie watched as Malone kicked the bushes a few times, then looked inside them. “There’s nobody here.”

Malone began to walk back when something pulled on his leg. He screamed in surprise as he was lifted over the wall and fell down on the other side.

Frankie rolled his eyes. Great, now he had to rescue the noob. He walked over to the bushes, climbed on to the wall and leapt down…

And found his face colliding with a gloved fist. He lost consciousness almost immediately.

“Your suit’s in the case,” Alfred said. “But this is bloody mental, even for you.”

“If a guy dressed as a bat takes down Falcone, the other mob bosses will think the old man’s luck ran out. If a guy dressed as a bat threatens every single one of them and then takes down Falcone, that’s psychological warfare,” Bruce justified his plan as he opened the case and changed out of Matches Malone’s three-piece sport suit and into the vigilante costume of the Bat. When he was done, he leapt over the wall while Alfred tied up the unconscious guard.

Meanwhile, inside the mansion, the heads of organised crime in Gotham City were debating their “business plans”. Mostly, they were trying to prevent disagreements over territory, both in the literal and figurative senses, but they were also attempting to come to a consensus on dealing with the threats to their operations. The mob bosses had managed to agree that while the DA’s office was a threat and some members of the GCPD were also dangerous, the Bat was useful as long as he stayed in the East End. He’d already taken care of those hood-wearing troublemakers for them.

Once the summit was about to conclude, Carmine Falcone raised his glass. The grey-haired man commanded the same respect and authority as a godfather and he made sure to look the part as well.

“My friends,” he spoke softly. “I would like to make a toast to the strong and loyal man who allowed us to hold this summit in his home. To Commissioner Loeb!”

“To Commissioner Loeb!” the other mobsters around the table chorused, raising their glasses towards the skylight.

Then the skylight shattered. A figure covered in a dark grey cape landed on the table. It didn’t take a genius to recognise the party crasher as the Bat of the East End, even as smoke filled the room.

None of the guards in the room would fire, for fear of hitting their employers. The smoke had obscured their vision and the dons were only slightly better off.

“Gentlemen,” the Bat growled. “You have eaten well. You have devoured Gotham’s spirit. But no more. Your feast is over. I am the ninety-nine percent, and our time is about to begin.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce, still wearing the bat costume, jumped down from the roof onto the fire escaped, picked the lock on the window and climbed into his apartment.

“You know, I just heard about a marvellous new invention,” Alfred said when he saw Bruce enter. “It’s called a door.”

Bruce smirked as he took of his cowl.

“How’d it go?” Alfred asked him.

“Exactly as planned. I actually did get shot at by a guard outside, but the new body armour stopped the bullet and absorbed the impact.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How did things go on your front?”

“You were right when you figured that Falcone’s men would be freaking out once they found out you’d crashed his party. It’s a good thing being on the lookout for a maniac dressed as a bat makes it difficult to notice more ordinary burglars.”

“So you have the photos?”

“Right here,” Alfred said, taking a camera out of his jacket pocket. “The relevant pages of the ledger – important holdings, civil servants in Falcone’s pocket, warehouse addresses and his schedule for the next two weeks. What’s going to happen to Malone?”

“Matches Malone can’t be seen as being tied to the Bat and this is the second encounter he’s had with him. Any more and I’ll have to create a new alias. If we want to ward of suspicion, Malone will have to be beaten up by the Bat.”

Alfred had an idea. “If the Bat interrogates Malone and the other guard at the same time, that will give us a witness who can confirm that the Bat beat Malone up and provide a reason for the Bat to know where Falcone’s going to be.”

“You’re a genius, Alfred,” Bruce said. “Just don’t rough Frank Rook up too much.”

/\\-^|^-/\

There had been a time when the Docklands were a thriving part of Gotham City, but that had been when Gotham as a city could be described as thriving. Like much of the Rust Belt, Gotham boasted massive industrial wealth until the multinational corporations decided that it was a better business strategy to make their products somewhere they didn’t have to worry about a minimum wage or workers’ rights, then import the finished goods to the commercialistic developed nations. That was how the factories shut down and the amount of goods leaving the harbour fell dramatically. Then, thanks to cargo planes, the Docklands lost imports as well. But nature abhors a vacuum and when the legal equivalents to organised crime groups stopped using the docks, the illegal ones filled the niche.

That was how the Docklands became a site where illegal drugs, guns, and other tools for making a profit while ruining lives entered the city.

And tonight, Gotham would receive a massive shipment. It was of high enough priority that Carmine Falcone, Gotham’s answer to the emperors of Rome, saw fit to be there himself.

Of course, there were concerns. The Bat had broken into Loeb’s house and threatened Falcone, as well as his competitors. But Loeb wasn’t exactly skilled, just wealthy, and the Bat was just a nutcase who got lucky because so far he’d only taken on other nutcases. This time, Falcone’s men would be ready and it would take more than smoke to stop them from pumping that bastard full of lead.

There was also the thief who’d stolen the Idol of Bast from a collector who had done business with Falcone in the past, but the Don did not consider that connection tangible enough to expect the thief to come after the Falcones themselves.

Milo Grappa opened the door of Carmine Falcone’s sports car and Falcone stepped out. The massive container was guarded by men from the cartels, Falcone’s trucks were guarded by his bodyguards, and a blond, heavyset cop with an unkempt beard was mediating between the two.

“Don Falcone, it is an honour,” the cop said as he saw Falcone. He held out his hand for Falcone to shake.

Carmine Falcone decided to humour the sycophant. He could tell the man only wanted money, but that should be enough to secure his loyalty.

As Falcone took out his suitcase, two of the cartel’s men started to approach the container to take out the drugs.

“Wait,” Falcone stopped them. “I am known as a man of my word and a man who can be trusted, but that does not mean I am too quick to trust others. Only one of you will be taking the drugs out of that container, with the help of one of my own men.”

The cartel didn’t seem happy, but they accepted. It was _not_ a good idea to defy Carmine Falcone. So one of their men and one of Falcone’s walked towards the container together. Meanwhile, Falcone and the cartel were left to discuss the price.

“Fifty grand for the whole shipment,” Falcone said.

The leader of the cartel looked uncomfortable. “With respect, Don Falcone,” he started to explain, “acquiring this shipment in the first place was difficult for us and fifty thousand dollars would not be sufficient compensation.”

“Are you implying that my offer is unreasonable?”

“Not at all, Don Falcone,” the man reassured him, “but you must understand, things have changed in the last few years. Rio is not safe for us anymore, with the _policia_ and-”

He was cut off by a yell from the container’s direction.

“If this was an attempt to deceive me,” Falcone said menacingly, “you will soon find yourself regretting it.”

“I know nothing of this!” the cartel’s leader insisted.

“We shall see. Leo, Ludwig,” Falcone said to two of his bodyguards, “see what has happened.”

The two men obeyed and approached the container, aiming their automatics at the darkness. The journey took time – there was a maze of other containers to navigate and, straightforward as it was, they knew that by the time they reached their destination their boss wouldn’t be able to see them.

A light shattered above them.

Leo saw something on the ground and picked it up. It was small, metal, and shaped like a bat. Then he looked up and saw… something hanging from a crane overhead. He signalled to Ludwig to look up as well.

“…the hell?”

The figure fell from the crane.

The two men let loose a hail of bullets, but the figure landed behind them, grabbed Leo and melted into the shadows with him.

Ludwig followed, the flashlight mounted on his gun showing him his way. He couldn’t see Leo or the figure anywhere.

“Where are you!?” he shouted.

“Here.”

Meanwhile, both sides of the deal had become impatient and sent the rest of their men to kill the intruder they assumed had decided to crash their deal. The skirmish that ensued was short and quick.

Falcone was puzzled to see only one of his men return, eyes wide in fear.

“He’s here!” the man said. “He’s here!”

“Talk some sense, will ya?” Milo demanded. “Who’s here?”

The light above them shattered while the terrified gunman shouted “the bat man!”

Falcone decided that, being a reasonable man, now was the time for him to get into his car and leave. As the men from the cartels fell to the ground and even Milo found himself on the losing side of a fight, Falcone locked the car door. When he saw the Bat take Milo down with a series of strikes to the head and abdomen, Falcone took out his gun.

“What are you?” he said.

The glass in the car window smashed and Falcone found himself being lifted out of his car and staring into the featureless eyes of a mask.

“I am the Bat.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Montoya and Bennet had been the ones to arrive at the scene. They’d found a dozen and a half men (meaning eighteen, not thirteen-point-five) bound with zip ties, a shipping container full of drugs, several firearms, and Carmine Falcone himself tied to a floodlight.

It was a good thing the floodlight was off because otherwise he’d have incurred severe burns as a result.

A thorough examination of the crime scene turned up enough evidence to make a strong case against Carmine Falcone. They’d finished searching the scene right as Vicky Vale had arrived, notified of the events by the Bat himself, so their case had the benefit of media coverage as well.

Rachel Dawes, the prosecuting attorney, had the benefit of leverage against Judge Graves in the form of incriminating photographs showing him exchanging money with Carmine Falcone. Nothing that would be damning in court, but give it to a reporter like Vicky Vale…

The message was clear.

Of course, the judge only presided over the case, decided which objections to overrule and which to sustain and held people in contempt if they were out of order. The jury were even more important.

That was what undid the case: more than the defending attorney, a small man who’d practically whimpered his way through the trial, the deciding factor was Falcone’s ability to have the ladies and gentlemen of the jury intimidated, blackmailed and bribed into deciding he was innocent.

Falcone went free, but the trial had gotten enough attention from the media that it was obvious what he’d done. The people of Gotham once again saw how blatantly corrupt their city’s infrastructure was, that a known mob boss with a deck stacked as far against him as possible was still able to coerce his way out of jail.

But this time, the people of Gotham weren’t resigned or apathetic. This time they were pissed off. And that worried Commissioner Loeb.

What worried him even more was the implication from an alleged statement by a member of the Bureau that federal law enforcement would be coming to Gotham one day.

If he wanted to keep his job, he could just take the Bat out and turn him into a scapegoat afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, it's not all smooth sailing. Falcone's not going to go down easy.  
> As you can tell, this is the point where I start hinting at stuff that will play a part in the story later on.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A version of the SWAT scene from Year One and Batman Begins appears here. I recommend listening to Bat Out of Hell while you read that scene, because that's what I listened to when I wrote it.

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five Years Ago**

The smoke from the fire clung to the mountainside.

Bruce had been steadily getting better at fighting without his sight for the past few weeks. He had the scars all over his arms, torso and legs from all the times he’d fallen down the rocky slope to prove it. Now he stood on a trail on a particularly steep part of the mountain, Maestre somewhere up the trail. This was Maestre’s final test: find her and defeat her in combat.

If Bruce made too much noise, he’d give away his location. It was the same problem that submarines faced when using active sonar. But he needed to do that to get an idea of what lay ahead in the low visibility of smoke. Passive sonar wasn’t an option.

Bruce picked up a small rock, placed it a pace ahead and rolled it down the mountain side.

The sound of rocks hitting rocks changed as the one he’d rolled travelled down and down and down. He knew how steep the mountainside was there. If he stepped off the trail, even for a second, the risk of falling would be too great.

Bruce tightened his gut and placed a hand on the mountain. He kept as close to the mountainside – and as far from the edge of the trail – as possible. Occasionally, he’d trace the edge with the toes on his left foot, so that he’d know when the trail widened and it was safe to relax.

Eventually, he reached the wider platform.

The smell of the smoke was stronger here. He was nearer to the flames, then.

He felt the wind on his skin. He was upwind of the fire. When he turned around, he could smell the branches burning.

Now he knew where he was in relation to the fire, he could picture the mountainside in his head. A few paces ahead, the sloping mountainside became less steep. If he could get there, he could get down the mountain.

Bruce heard the sound of rocks moving three paces behind him, on his right. But he remembered that there was a vantage point not far above this platform: it would be easy to throw a stone as a distraction.

Bruce sprinted towards the mountainside, but stopped halfway there. Now he had flat ground all around him. He couldn’t tell when Maestre would strike, so as he waited he turned in a circle, lashing out with a sweeping kick or an uppercut at random intervals.

He heard the air whistle as the cane cut through it. Bruce ducked, grabbed the cane with both hands and wrenched it out of Maestre’s hands.

Bruce let go of the cane with his left hand, but held on with his right. He swung, aiming for where Maestre’s knees would be.

The cane only struck air. Maestre had jumped above it. Bruce realized this in a fraction of a second and dodged the kick to his face. As Maestre landed, Bruce lashed out with a sweeping kick, knocking his mentor off her balance.

Maestre fell backwards, breaking her fall by sticking her arms out behind her.

Bruce tossed the cane to the side and pinned Maestre to the ground: he grabbed her left wrist with his right hand and held her left arm over his right leg, while placing his left elbow below her neck and laying diagonally across her torso.

“ _Yield_ ,” he said.

“ _You’ve finally learned to mind your surroundings,_ ” Maestre remarked. “ _Congratulations.”_  Maestre struck Bruce’s neck with her right hand. The pain loosened his grip on her left wrist long enough for Maestre to free her left arm and throw Bruce off of her. _“You need to work on restraining your opponents,_ ” she said as she stood up, _“but other than that your training is complete._ ”

**Gotham City, USA**

**The Present Day**

The walls in Commissioner Loeb’s office were painted light green. His desk had a golden trim and he had a framed article about the 2nd Bank of Gotham on his wall.

Loeb himself was sitting at his desk, wearing gold-rimmed square glasses and an Italian suit.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Loeb said.

Sergeant Gordon entered the office. The Commissioner told Gordon to have a seat, so he sat down. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes, Sergeant, I did. See, it occurs to me that the GCPD has a problem and that problem is dressed up as a flying rodent and beating up some very rich people who make sure that money keeps coming into our pockets. I want you to take care of it.”

“With respect, sir, I don’t think that the Bat is our primary concern right now. Falcone’s not going to be idle, we have to anticipate his next move-“

“And if we do him a favour, he’ll reward us handsomely. Maybe even make sure the Feds stay off our backs. This is why I don’t pay you to think, Gordon.” Loeb paused. “And if you still don’t want to do your part to help us here on the force, remember what happened last time you refused to look out for your own too much.”

“Are you threatening my family?” Gordon almost growled.

Loeb laughed. “No, Gordon. I’m threatening to tell her. I’m guessing your niece doesn’t know why her parents were hit by that car, does she?”

/\\-^|^-/\

The first thing Gordon noticed about Essen’s apartment was how Spartan it was.

The walls hadn’t been painted, so the red top layer of paint was faded. There were the bare essentials - a kitchen with an oven and a fridge, a bedroom with a bed and a closet, and a bathroom – but no TV or radio. The kitchen was the closest thing to a living room. The only other thing in her home was the cork board with red strings connecting various photographs and cuttings of newspaper articles tacked on to it.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Essen said.

“Reminds me of the place where I lived before I got Barbara.” Gordon smiled, but only for a second. “Essen, I need your help.”

“I figured. On the phone, you sounded worried. What’s happened?”

Gordon sighed. “Loeb wants me to take down the Bat. I think he’s hoping that at least one of us will come out of that fight dead or disgraced.”

“There are rumours that the Feds are considering getting involved in Gotham,” Essen said. “Loeb’s probably thinking that if he does Falcone a favour by getting rid of the Bat, Falcone will reciprocate and keep the Feds out. You refused, right?”

“I couldn’t.” Essen started to protest, but Gordon stopped her. “Essen, Barbara doesn’t know why that hit-and-run really happened. Loeb does.”

“And if you don’t play along, he’s going to tell her,” Essen realised. “Gordon, you do know you’re going to have to tell her sooner or later, right?”

“I know, but… it’s not something I’m looking forward to doing. And I don’t want to be forced to tell her now. When I’ll tell her, it will be because she’s ready to hear it. Essen, I need you to help me find out who the Bat is. Maybe we’ll have to take him down, or maybe he’ll be able to help us put Loeb behind bars, but either way I have to find him and I don’t know if I can do it on my own.”

Essen sighed. “It’s not ideal, but it’s the best option we have right now. I’ll help you, Gordon.”

/\\-^|^-/\

The first thing Gordon and Essen had done to try to find the Bat was to talk to the only reporter so far who’d managed to interview the vigilante.

“Miss Vale, we’ll get right to the point: do you know where the Bat is?”

“He never told me where he lived, lieutenant. You can check the recordings of our interview if you don’t believe me.”

“He didn’t have to tell you,” Gordon pointed out. “You could have figured it out yourself. All we need is any information you have on him.”

Vale scoffed. “I heard the GCPD wants to take the Bat down. You’re both good cops – I’ve written enough articles on both of you to know that – but do you really believe Loeb will let you bring him in alive?”

“We have to try, don’t we?” Essen replied. “And who knows: he might be able to give us information that would prove useful.”

“Alright,” Vale gave in. “Not long before I got the chance to talk to him, I looked at all of the reported sightings of the Bat. I’ve managed to narrow down his base of operations to one of three neighbourhoods – they’re the ones where he’s most often seen in the evening and just before morning.”

“That’s definitely helpful. One more thing, can you tell us who put you in contact with the Bat?”

“No, Sergeant, I can’t. If my sources prefer to stay anonymous, you bet your ass I’ll keep them anonymous, no matter who’s asking.”

The two cops walked away from that meeting with the names of three different neighbourhoods. That was useful information, but they needed more.

Gordon recalled that the Bat had used a smoke bomb against the Red Hoods at Gearhead Motors and the canister had been left behind. It was now in the GCPD evidence locker. He asked Bennet to find out where the Bat could have bought - or made – the device, and Bennet told him that smoke grenades like that were on sale at the Merc – a warehouse by the river used by the Bratva to sell weapons to criminals.

Essen had contacts in the Bratva, so she’d asked around and found out that since the Bat came to the East End, various individuals had come to the Merc and bought only non-lethal objects.  The tools, body armour, et cetera, that these strange customers had bought matched the equipment the Bat had used. The store clerk said that he’d seen one of them get into a van before leaving, and had seen the license plate.

Gordon ran the plate and found that it was registered to a company called Xiro & Son. That turned out to be a shell corporation that owned some warehouses as well as a building in one of the three neighbourhoods Vale had given to Gordon and Essen.

The GCPD raided the warehouses the next day.

/\\-^|^-/\

Watching the two cops find his base of operations, the Bat took out a burner phone and called the first number.

“Alfred. The Belfry’s been compromised. We have to relocate to the Bunker.”

On the other end of the line, the British man started cursing as he begun to pack up all of the vigilante’s equipment and case files.

By the time the GCPD broke down the door to the apartment, it was already empty.

Xiro & Son Real Estate’s assets would be frozen. The shell corporation was connected to the Bat and following the money might provide a lead.

/\\-^|^-/\

John Blake was sitting on the fire escape again, waiting to see if the Bat would show up. The guy had messed up bad when he’d pissed off Falcone and now John’s whole neighbourhood was swarming with enforcers looking for a vigilante to kill.

The Bat didn’t show up, but his ‘butler’ did. John heard the older man shout “oi, Blake!” up to the teenager’s perch above the alley.

“I thought you all knew parkour,” John said.

“Have you tried running around on rooftops like one of the frogs with a bloody prosthetic attached to your leg? It’s not easy, mate, let me tell you that.”

John climbed down the ladder, then leapt the last few feet down to the ground. “So why couldn’t the Bat be bother to show up himself?”

“The coppers are after his hide. Seems Commissioner Loeb wasn’t happy about his boss being put on trial. And now the Bat needs our help.”

 “What does he need us to do?”

“Not much. But the apartment’s been compromised and that police radio of his means we know Loeb’s going to bring SWAT into this to hunt him down. So he might need a getaway car, and depending on the state he’s in, getting him in there might be a two-man job.”

“I’m up for that,” John said.

/\\-^|^-/\

 “Step aside, Gordon.”

James Gordon recognised that voice. It belonged to the man who, along with Flass and Loeb, made up the triad of corruption in the GCPD.

Howard Branden. The most trigger happy SWAT cop in existence, who would firebomb a jaywalker to kingdom come.

The question was, why was he here? Gordon and Essen had been lying in wait for the Bat at Park Row - he’d been seen there more than elsewhere - and when he showed up they’d tried to apprehend him. The Bat had evaded them and they’d chased him here: to an abandoned building that used to be one of Linseed’s housing projects. Gordon had called in backup in case it came to a fight, but he was _not_ expecting Branden.

“What are you doing here, Branden?”

“See that’s the thing, Gordon. Loeb doesn’t think you’re fully invested in taking care of this problem so he called _me_ in to do the job for you…” Branden stopped when he saw Essen. “And Internal Affairs, I see. Don’t tell me you’re turning into a snitch, Gordon.”

Gordon include the not-fully-untrue accusation. “The Bat has to be brought in alive, Branden.”

“Actually, he has to be brought in dead. He might know some things we’d prefer to keep on the down low, and Loeb wants to make sure he won’t sing,” Branden said. “Or squeal. Or whatever it is that bats do anyway. Take him out, boys!”

Branden’s SWAT team knocked down the door to the abandoned housing project and swarmed in.

The Bat had hidden in a spacious room trying to formulate a strategy. There were too many SWAT cops to take out, he knew that, so instead he’d have to use unconventional tactics. He knew what tactic would be optimal here, but to implement it he’d need to get down into the basement.

He punched through a section of the wall and entered the crawlspace so that he’d be able to reach the stairwell without running into any unwanted attention.

When he could tell by the absence of a floor beneath his feet that he was in the right place, he listened for the sound of footsteps. When he was sure there was nobody on the other side, the Bat brought his knee up through the wall and walked out.

It was only as he was almost in the basement that things went wrong.

“Freeze!”

The Bat didn’t freeze, he tackled the SWAT cop to the ground and immobilised him in a choke hold. It hadn’t been much of a struggle, but the noise would still attract the rest of the team, so the Bat descended into the basement as quickly as he could. There was a boiler there, and a large hole in the ceiling above it.

Next to the boiler, Bruce saw what he was looking for: piping, rusted and leading down into the catacombs beneath the city. Alfred had tested the device, so Bruce knew it would work. He just hoped it could survive the fall.

Then he realised that the pipes were still in good enough condition that he couldn’t just push the ultrasound emitter through one of the holes - they were too small.

This was a problem, so Bruce put on one of his knuckledusters and hit one of the pipes with it until the pipe broke.

He took out the device, pressed the button that would start the three minute timer, and dropped it down the pipe.

Then he heard a small metal object hit the ground next to him and looked down. It was a grenade.

Bruce didn’t know how powerful it was, but he figured that his best chance of getting out of the blast radius was to go up so he climbed onto the boiler and leapt into the room above, hoping the floor didn’t give way when he landed.

Something cracked when his feet hit the boards, but nothing gave way. Then the grenade exploded and Bruce was disoriented by the blast. Disoriented enough that when the floorboards splintered and shattered, he couldn’t save himself from falling.

Bruce hit the concrete in the basement hard and coughed up blood.

His ears were ringing and he was being kicked repeatedly by… three? No, four. Four SWAT cops.

Bruce knew he had to get out of there fast, so as he was dragged up to his knees and a SWAT member kneed him in the face, Bruce reached into his belt and took out a metal canister.

He struck with his knuckle-duster first, waiting until the cop brought his knee up into the Bat’s face again, then hitting his assailant with the weapon in the groin.

As the cop collapsed, the Bat rushed forward and threw the smoke pellet to the ground.

He wouldn’t waste his time with every SWAT member, so instead he ran up the stairs and tossed a flashbang behind his back. It should be able to stun the four cops long enough for the Bat to escape.

He had two smoke bombs and three flashbangs left. He put on his other knuckleduster.

A trio of armoured cops ran into the room. Two flashbangs left. Dislocate one cop’s arm, strike another’s diaphragm and throw the third one through the doorway into the corridor.

Another cop saw that and rushed towards the room. Waiting until he reached the doorway, then striking him with his fist. The cop fell to the ground. The corridor would lead outside.

Five more cops. Took two flashbangs because two stayed back while three attacked at once. No flashbangs left then. Not much time left, one cop getting up and the corridor doesn’t lead straight outside.

Solution: through the cop getting up through the wall to make a shortcut.

Another four. A smoke bomb into the corridor, then stun each one with a quick strike, rushing through the smoke.

 _Remember Maestre’s lessons_ , Bruce thought. _In the smoke, fight with your eyes closed. Use your other senses_.

Two cops left. Almost outside. The last smoke bomb.

The closer one could still see Bruce. Bruce let himself be followed into a room to the side, then put the cop in a chokehold. The other one was still trying to find them.

Outside, Branden was getting angry. “What the hell’s taking so long?”

“Maybe your guys are getting their asses kicked,” Gordon suggested.

“Shut up,” Branden growled.

A nearby cop was using a megaphone to announce to the Bat that the GCPD had him surrounded. Branden grabbed the device and yelled “hey jackass! If I don’t see you coming out of that door within the next five seconds, I’m going to blow this entire block to kingdom come! Five-“

He never got to finish his countdown because an armored SWAT cop came flying through the door, landing at Branden’s feet.

Then a swarm of bats burst out of the house and the tunnels beneath the streets.

Gordon and Essen yelled at everyone to get down on the ground right before Branden started shooting his gun wildly, hoping to hit something despite being unable to see thanks to the swarm. The last thing Branden saw before he lost consciousness was the shadowy wings parting to make way for a gloved fist rushing towards his face.

Seconds later, somewhere behind the cops’ cars, a vehicle started up and drove away.

/\\-^|^-/\

If somebody was brought into Leslie’s clinic injured, she didn’t ask who they were or what they were doing. All she needed to know was what kind of injury it was, where it was, and – if the injury was severe enough to warrant surgery - if they were allergic to anaesthetic. But when John Blake and Alfred Pennyworth brought the Bat into her clinic on a stretcher, suit damaged and partly removed and body armour missing, there was one more question she had to ask than usual.

Alfred answered each question she asked.

“What happened?”

“SWAT tried to take him down. He made it out, but by then he was already battered.”

“What injuries does he have?”

“No fractures as far as I could tell, but several ribs are cracked, he’s coughing up blood, he’s got some bad cuts, and his abdomen’s been kicked too many times.”

“He needs surgery, is he allergic to anaesthetic?”

“No, no he isn’t.”

So she operated on the vigilante who’d become the East End’s hero. The biggest concern was internal bleeding, especially in his chest. Leslie had to cauterise some of his blood vessels. He’d need time to recover – at least a month, and much longer if he decided to get back to fighting dangerous criminals.

She’d kept his mask on.

After the surgery, she explained to Alfred and John that the Bat would have to stay in the clinic for now. After John left, she asked Alfred one last question.

“He’s Bruce, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Detective Flass. To what do I owe this honour?”

Flass grinned. Carmine Falcone didn’t trust the corrupt cop – he was a corrupt cop – but it was wise to let Flass think he had a friend in the mob boss. “You remember Rachel Dawes? The assistant district attorney who tried to put you in the slammer?”

Of course Carmine remembered. Miss Dawes was a highly skilled attorney and there was a genuine risk that he’d lose the case because of her. That was the only reason Falcone would lower himself to coercing the jury to vote in his favour.

Flass continued talking. “Well turns out, she don’t know when to quit. She’s still looking for a way to put you behind bars. Just letting you know so you can… do something about it.”

“You want me to have a district attorney killed?”

“With respect, Don Falcone: this is Gotham. People get mugged coming home from work all the time. Sometimes things just go wrong.”

Falcone considered this. Of course, putting a hit out on a district attorney – even an assistant one – was a risk. But… there were a lot of new players now, and old players getting back in the game. It might pay to see what some of them will do in response to this. Study the opponent, revise the strategy.

“Thank you for your advice, Detective Flass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I came up with the name 'Xiro and Son' this way: the scientific name for bats is 'chiroptera', which if you move one of the letters and put a space in the middle becomes 'Chiro Pater' - which translates to 'Chiro the Father'. 'Ch' looks like X in the Greek alphabet, which would make it 'Xiro the Father', and where's there's a father you can expect to find a daughter or a son.  
> This is the halfway point of the Bat of the East End. Any thoughts on the story so far?


	8. Chapter Eight

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five Years Ago**

Jacqueline had been training Bruce for three months now. In that time, Bruce had learnt how to fight effectively without relying on any one of his senses above the others, and had begun to master capoeira. He’d also gone down the mountaintop and spent much of his free time in the favelas, seeing the living conditions there.

Thugs and drug dealers ran the slums. Children were forced to work in unsafe conditions for insufficient wages, many even turning to crime to support their families. Disease took most people’s lives when they were middle-aged or younger and with the poor education system, the younger generations had very little chance of finding a way out.

The situation was as bad as the Narrows, if not worse. Bruce couldn’t stand for that.

Bruce caught Jacqueline’s walking stick before she could strike his temple with it, then wrenched it out of her hands. He hadn’t been as distracted as he seemed.

He’d already passed the final test and completed this stage of his training two days ago. This match was just a competition. But it was one that both of them intended to win.

Bruce swung the stick at his sparring partner’s midsection. Jacqueline crouched and only leapt to her feet once the stick had travelled over her, unleashing a sweeping kick. Bruce leapt above her leg rather than stepping back - if he did that, he’d be getting closer to the edge of the path like his mentor wanted him to.

Jacqueline threw a punch at Bruce’s head. Bruce blocked by bringing his left forearm up across his forehead, clasping his wrist with his other hand. He turned both arms so that his left forearm was horizontal across his face and his right hand protecting the back of his head.

They continued to spar until the sun set. The final result was a tie, so they returned to Jacqueline’s house. Gael had already gotten a fire going.

“ _We are in luck today,_ ” Gael greeted them cheerfully as they entered. “ _Look at this,_ ” he gestured to the chicken cooking on a spit above the fire. _“Fresh meat! I bought it in the city. See what I mean about the wonders of saving up, Bruce?_ ”

Bruce smiled. The last time he’d done something like this, he’d had to subsist entirely on tinned food, but even then he could have easily gone back home. This time he wasn’t even in the same country.

The three of them talked while they waited, then Gael took the spit off the fire and they split the chicken up amongst themselves. Once they’d eaten, Jacqueline left to dispose of the bones and cartilage that remained.

 _“So,_ ” Gael inquired. “ _What now? Jacqueline says you’ve already completed your training._ ”

 _“Now… I’ve seen what it’s like in the favelas. I want to do something about it._ ”

Gael smiled. _“Bruce… You have a good heart, but you don’t understand what it’s like in places like this. Not yet anyway. All the things that are wrong with our lives… it won’t be an easy fix._ ”

“ _I know. But I have the chance to start something._ ” Bruce paused. “ _We have the chance to start something,_ ” he corrected himself. _“All we have to do is take down the monster who’s made himself king down there._ ”

**Gotham City, USA**

**Present Day**

Bruce woke up in a white room. Light was pouring in through the window despite the drawn curtains. He tried to sit up and winced.

“Your butler said you’d try that,” a voice said.

Bruce turned his head and saw John Blake sitting in a wooden chair. Then Bruce realised his mask was off.

His eyes must have widened, because Blake told him not to worry. “I haven’t told anyone yet, and I’ve known since I overheard Alfred and Leslie talking about you.”

Bruce tried to sit up again. Eventually, he gave up and fell back to the bed. He’d try again when the black spots disappeared from his eyes.

“You remind me of my brother right now,” Blake laughed. “He always tries to power through it when he gets ill.”

“I’m not ill,” Bruce muttered.

“But you _are_ injured. You took a beating from a SWAT team.”

Bruce remembered something and his eyes widened in fear.

“Alfred bleached the crime scene before forensics got there,” John assured Bruce. “Your secret’s still safe.”

They were both silent for a while.

“So,” Blake said at last. “Bruce Wayne, huh?”

Bruce nodded. “The one and only.”

“You know, I uh… I hated you. I used to, years ago. Everyone kept talking about the poor billionaire orphan, but nobody seemed to remember the orphans who actually _were_ poor.”

“I hated myself too,” Bruce admitted. “For that exact thing, actually. That’s why I crashed that Porsche into the river.”

“Trying to get people to stop using you for good PR?”

“Yep.” Bruce thought for a while. “Well… it might have also been because it was fun.”

“They talked about that in the news. It wasn’t even _your_ Porsche.”

“Well, why own a Porsche when you can afford a DeLorean?”

They both laughed.

Then they fell silent again.

“You know, I said I _used_ to hate you. Eventually I realized you didn’t ask for any of that – the attention from all those people who just wanted to look like they care.”

“I know. But that doesn’t mean I want to face that.”

/\\-^|^-/\

 “You know, sooner or later people are going to notice that the six of you keep meeting here,” Vic the Bartender said.

“Probably,” Gordon acknowledged. “But we might as well do some good while we’re here.”

“And drink beer!” Bullock added, making Vic laugh.

“Yeah, you guys are my best customers. Hell, with you around the normal people coming here feel safe and I don’t have to worry about the scumbags showing up to cause trouble. Anyway, I’m going to leave so if somebody corners me in an alley and threatens to break my kneecaps, I won’t be lying when I tell them I didn’t hear anything important from any of you.”

With that, Vic left the Skeleton Crew – with Essen as an honorary member – to discuss their plans.

“I found a lead,” Bennet said. “There’s a dealer in Scurvytown who’s been lining pockets for a long time. His name’s Archie Mitchell, and word is, he keeps track of whose pockets those are. If anyone has evidence against Flass, it’s him.”

“So we get him to testify,” Yin said, “and we have leverage on Flass.”

“And then we can get Flass to testify against Loeb and maybe even Branden in exchange for a lighter sentence.” Montoya added.

“Then Loeb would try to save his own skin by giving us his list of dirty cops and _bam_ , a new dawn for the GCPD,” Essen finished.

“That’s a good plan,” Bullock said. “Except there’s one thing you’re all forgetting: _most of the GCPD is dirty!_ It might be a new dawn, but we’ll be working from dawn ‘til dusk trying to pick up the slack because we’d have lost most of our manpower. _And_ womanpower, for that matter. The take is unisex.”

“Bullock has a point,” Gordon said, “but we can handle the added workload, and we’re always recruiting new cops. What worries _me_ is how we’re supposed to get him to testify in the first place.”

“Already got that sorted for you,” Bennet smiled. “See, I found this out from a guy I know who worked that beat when he started out – Cash Tankinson – and since he’s with Narc Unit now, I asked him to do me a favour and go back there to catch Archie in the act. It shouldn’t take long, and once he’s done it we can offer the dealer a deal of our own.”

/\\-^|^-/\

District Attorney Finch was sitting at his desk, head in his hands. He was worried about going grey within the next two years. Two _months_ if his assistant DAs kept this up. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t fire both of you right now.”

“People have to threaten the jury to make us lose our cases?” Dawes suggested.

“We pick our cases on an ethical bases rather than the size of the bribe we’d get for messing it up?” Dent added.

“The media loves us, therefore the voters love us…” Dawes began.

“Therefore the mayor loves us, therefore the mayor loves the DA who continues to employ us?” Dent finished.

Finch wished he had a time machine so he could go back and punch himself for deciding to go to law school. He sighed. “Look: it’s good that you both want to do good in this city, but can you do good _without_ making waves? Do you _want_ Falcone to notice you? Because I can guarantee that you won’t enjoy the result.”

“I don’t know about Dent, but I want Falcone to not be able to do anything about any crusading attorneys he notices.”

“I just want to take down all the civil servants who take bribes and obstruct justice so we can get to the important part: fighting organized crime.”

This was _not_ helping Finch be less frustrated. “Okay, you two can leave now. I have to punch Captain Clown again.”

/\\-^|^-/\

After a month at Leslie’s clinic, Bruce was cleared to go back home.

‘Home’ in this scenario meant the Bunker.

Bruce explained the story behind it to John on the way: he’d discovered Gotham’s subterranean network of tunnels when he was fourteen. Connecting Gotham’s famous caverns, it had originally been constructed after the Revolutionary War, to secretly transport troops and supplies around the city in the event of a British occupation in the future – that came in handy during the War of 1812, but afterwards the tunnels fell into disuse and legend. The Wayne family rediscovered them a generation later and, as members of the Underground Railroad, used them to transport freed slaves north. The tunnel network was expanded upon during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression: the city attempted to build a subway network, intending to complete it by 1935 – that was pushed back to 1940 thanks to the Wall Street Crash and called off completely when the subway tunnels collapsed because of structural instability and the resulting earthquake. The result: cavernous tunnels beneath the city with an occasional bunker or station.

The Bunker was actually one of fifty-two bunkers, five of which were beneath the East End. It was the stable one of the five, and after returning to Gotham Bruce decided to use it as a secondary base of operations.

It was a lot like Bruce’s old apartment – bare walls, everything was grey, a desk and a worktable, a fridge and all of his equipment and supplies (transported there by Alfred). The main differences were the lack of windows, the presence of an electrical generator Bruce had built himself, the rifle-like contraption on the worktable, and the sketches for the aforementioned contraption.

His suit was there too, but Bruce could see a substantial amount of tears and punctures in it.

“That thing’s trashed,” Alfred said, “so you’d be out of commission for a while even _if_ you weren’t still recovering.”

“I _have_ recovered, Alfred. And that’s not my only suit.”

“Just because you’re cleared to go leave the hospital bed, doesn’t mean you’re ready to get back to running around on rooftops and picking fights.”

“I’ve already been gone a month, Alfred. I can’t be gone any longer, who knows what will happen?”

“And yet you decided that _Bruce Wayne_ could be gone for five bloody years – _more_ actually, since you’re not _officially_ back yet – without any trouble!” Alfred snapped.

Bruce was confused for a while, but then he figured it out: him leaving Gotham without a word had stung Alfred, _coming back_ without a word had stung even more. And now Alfred was letting him know that.

“I’m sorry Alfred,” Bruce said. “But Bruce Wayne isn’t the hero Gotham needs right now, the Bat is. And I can’t just stand by and do nothing while Falcone continues to exploit this city because _I failed_.”

Alfred sat down in the chair by the desk. He ran his hand through his grey hair. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

Bruce shook his head.

“Fine. But stay out of the action for now,” Alfred said, then paused. “Blake and I will find out what Falcone’s next move is. Then we’ll come up with a plan to stop him, and then a plan to take him down – _successfully_ this time.”

“Uh, there’s one thing you’re both forgetting,” John said. “We’re not the only three people in Gotham who want to take down Falcone. Maybe someone else already _has_ a plan – we could make an alliance with them and make life easier for everybody.”

Bruce and Alfred both wondered how come _they_ hadn’t thought of that given that one of them had taken down seven drug lords, spent a year as a mercenary, and fought pirates, and the other one had been a bloody Royal Marine. Not that the bloody Royal Marine _knew_ about the pirate-fighting, mercenary work, or four of the seven drug lords.

/\\-^|^-/\

Step One of The Plan ~~TM~~ BAT : find, capture and interrogate somebody who works for Carmine Falcone.

There were two ways to achieve this step: the first way was to attack one of Falcone’s known properties, given that it was virtually guaranteed that some of his employees would be there, but Alfred dismissed this option as “stark raving bonkers, Falcone’s going to have those places bloody _crawling_ with gun-wielding maniacs, let’s stick to the plans where our chances of survival are _more_ than fifty per cent”; the second way was to find a business that was being harassed by Falcone’s enforcers as part of a protection racket.

This was harder than one would expect, given that Falcone didn’t go in for harassing small business owners. Fortunately, he seemed to consider corporations fair game judging by the noises that could occasionally be heard coming from the back of a local Big Belly Burger.

“Either that or the manager of that Triple-B likes it rough,” Blake commented.

Fortunately, it turned out to be the first one. As the mob enforcer walked out of the back door, Alfred waited atop a fire escape for the perfect opportunity.

That mob enforcer woke up when one of his fingers was smashed with a hammer. He was in a dark room with a single, dim lightbulb swinging above him. When he was threatened with kneecapping if he refused to tell his captors everything Falcone had done recently or was planning to do, he broke down. It had something to do with the fact that the British person making the threat then proceeded to break one of the kneecaps as a demonstration.

That was how Alfred and John were able to tell Bruce that Falcone had put out a hit on the DA’s office – specifically, Dent, Dawes and Finch.

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon had kept secrets before. His closet was full of skeletons, and so far most of them had managed to stay in there. But this one was different. This was a secret he was keeping from his family, and it was corroding him from the inside.

He had to come clean.

That was why he knocked on Barbara’s door that evening.

“You can come in, dad,” she said.

“Barbara, I…” Gordon started. “I have to tell you something. About your parents. About how...”

“About how they died?” she asked, turning to face him.

“I still remember every minute of that day,” Jim said. “Your parents’ car broke down and they asked to borrow mine to go shopping. I asked them to stop for donuts on the way back. Later that day, I got the call… that they were in hospital…”

“Dad,” Barbara put her hand on his. “I know about the hit and run.”

“No,” Jim said. “Not the whole story. They were in my car and they’d stopped where I used to stop on my way home… and then their car was hit only minutes later. Because the driver of the other car saw _my_ car where _I_ usually went and thought I was the one driving it…. That driver was a hitman. Barbara, I was the one supposed to die in that crash, not your parents.” Gordon fell silent.

Barbara hugged him.

“I already knew he was a hitman, Dad.”

“…You did?” Gordon asked, surprised. “How long have you known?”

“I was twelve when I found out. I’d just decided to teach myself hacking – nothing evil, I just wanted to get revenge on a bully at school,” she clarified, seeing the worried look on her dad’s face. “You’d left your work phone on the table, so I thought that I’d test myself by trying to hack the GCPD servers. I found the casefile on the crash and, well, I put two and two together,” Barbara explained. “And I _never_ blamed you, Dad.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Finch saw the black sedan pull up outside of the building when he looked out the window. He recognised the man who got out – Johnny Vitti, Falcone’s nephew. “Crap, Falcone’s finally noticed those two.” Finch wasn’t sure even Captain Clown could help him recover from _this_ amount of stress.

He called the concierge and told him to put the building on lockdown. Yeah, he could do that. It wouldn’t stop Vitti because the _stairs_ wouldn’t be locked down, but it would buy the attorney time. He pressed the button that sent an SOS to the GCPD. Finch stepped out of his office and locked the door to the staircase. Then he told an intern to tell Dent and Dawes to come to his office ASAP. “Once you’ve done that, hide.”

Finch went back into his office and took the portrait of himself with his family. He had just opened the safe behind the portrait when his turbulent ADAs entered his office.

“What’s going on?” Dawes asked.

“Falcone sent his nephew-slash-hitman to kill us, thanks to you two _probably_ ,” Finch explained while taking a machine gun out of the safe and setting it down on the desk. “When he gets here, it will help to be ready,” he continued as he did the same with a pair of double-barrelled shotguns. He then took out a pair of .22 revolvers.

“The machine gun will need dismantling after a minute of continuous fire, otherwise it will overheat. Everything else works the way it does in the movies, except that you have to reload and recoil is an actual problem so you’re better off using both hands. Take two guns each – leave the machine gun for _me_ – and try not to hit yourselves in the face shooting Vitti.”

The room outside had fallen silent, except for a strange clang that came from outside. It sounded as if somebody had thrown something metal at the grotesque above the window.

Finch, Dawes, and Dent stepped out of Finch’s office and trained their guns on the door between them and the stairs.

Dent was holding a revolver and had a shotgun in his belt; Dawes had placed a revolver in her pocket, and was aiming a shotgun at the door. Neither of them had a proper holster.

Dent had flipped a coin to decide which gun to use first.

The lock exploded and the door flew open. Johnny Vitti was holding a rifle.

“Take cover!” yelled Finch. The three attorneys leapt behind a desk each, overturning them to provide better protection from the hail of bullets.

Vitti fired, cocked his rifle and fired again.

Finch responded by unloading his machine gun in Vitti’s direction. The hitman wasn’t hit, but he was forced into cover. That gave Finch’s weapon time to cool off.

Vitti fired his rifle at the desk Finch had hid behind and was shot at by both Dawes and Dent. One of them managed to actually _hit_ him.

At that moment, shards of glass covered the floor. The window had been smashed and a red and black blur leapt through the hole.

Vitti turned to shoot the intruder, but his rifle was wrenched from his hands and he received an uppercut to the jaw. That stunned him long enough for the new combatant to attack him with a flurry of punches and kicks.

Vitti stumbled back. His opponent growled, “Run.”

Vitti would have kept fighting, but he heard sirens in the distance. Not wanting to get caught, he decided to follow that advice.

As the attorneys emerged from behind the overturned desks, they realised who had rescued them. The costume was different – red and black instead of a mix of greys, a domino mask instead of a cowl, _actual wings_ instead of a cape – but this was clearly the Bat of the East End.

The wings were a dead giveaway on that front.

“New suit?” Dent asked. The Bat seemed to have exchanged “stone-cold badass in a great Halloween costume” for “stoned jackass in a terrible Halloween costume”.

“Old suit,” the Bat replied. “The current one’s trashed.”

“The cops will be here soon,” Finch said, “and so will my bodyguards. So you should probably leave before one of them decides to shoot you.”

“Thanks for the tip.” The Bat leapt out the window and grabbed onto a rope.

The attorneys hadn’t noticed that before, but they had an excuse for that. The Bat climbed up onto the grotesque and pulled the rope up and then he was gone.

/\\-^|^-/\

Soon after these events, Vale got a call from the Bat. He wanted her to arrange a meeting with the attorneys and the Skeleton Crew. That was easy enough.

Bruce, meanwhile, got to work repairing his suit. For now, he’d stick with the one he had, but he’d gotten a few ideas for a _third_ iteration: shorter ears, an insignia of some sort to draw fire towards the chest, maybe a collapsible arm guard so he could block blade attacks but avoid stabbing criminals in the gut by accident.

Two days later, he got a text from Vale telling him the time and place of the meeting.

When he got there, the three attorneys and six cops were already waiting. It turned out that Dent was already working with the Skeleton Crew via Essen and Gordon on taking down Commissioner Loeb. That seemed like a good first mission for their new alliance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've already got all of the remaining chapters written, but there will be sequels and I'd really like to get some feedback, so please leave a comment. What was your favourite chapter so far? Which characters do you want to see more of? What did you think of the interactions between Bruce and Alfred, or between Jim and Barbara? What are your thoughts on the humour here?


	9. Chapter Nine

**Rio de Janeiro**

**Five Years Ago**

It had been four and a half months since that fateful decision to wrest the favela from Ferreiro’s grip. Bruce, Gael and Jacqueline’s efforts had gone well so far.

“ _People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy,_ ” Bruce had said. “ _What example is more dramatic than folk heroes, than rebels who fight for the oppressed populace?_ ” So that’s what they’d done.

It started small. Attacks on Ferreiro’s drug pushers, infrequent raids on the cars that brought the drugs into or out of the favela in the first place. Showing that not everybody was willing to bow down to a tyrant.

The next step was to win the hearts of the people. Ferreiro might be a monster, but so many only had jobs because of that monster. Helping those people keep their homes in good condition, teaching them skills that they can use to get better jobs and bring money to their families without risking those families’ lives if they made a mistake… that spark of hope was all it took.

Soon, Ferreiro found himself fighting an inferno of resistance. And that’s what the resistance named themselves.

_Inferno_.

Finally, the day had come. Ferreiro was losing control of the favela. They had to take their chance now, before he sent in stronger mercenaries with larger guns. The drug lord may have ruled a favela, but he’d used his money to buy a house in the suburbs. A whole floor of a skyscraper. Taking it would be difficult.

Fortunately, Inferno had a plan.

“ _Here’s how we’re going to do it,_ ” Bruce said to the people who had volunteered to join his, Gael’s and Jacqueline’s cause. Not all of Inferno’s members were there, some had to take care of their loved ones, but over two dozen had gathered. “ _First, we’ll need a distraction. When we’re getting everything in order, we’ll use code words to make Ferreiro’s spies think we’re planning another strike here, in the favela._ ”

The drug lord had tried to send spies to infiltrate Inferno itself – first a member of his own organisation, then a resident of the favela who needed the money - but once their respective eyes were opened to the poverty and humanity that coexisted in the favela, and the hope Inferno offered, they’d switched sides and outed themselves to the rest of the group. Now Ferreiro depended on eavesdroppers for his information. “ _Here are the code words and their meanings_ ,” Bruce said as he passed around sheets of paper. Most of Inferno had not known how to read or write at first, but Gael had taught them. “ _We’ll need to have two rope ladders made_.” One of the people who hadn’t come but _had_ agreed to help Inferno had the necessary skill set for that. _“To get into Ferreiro’s home, we’ll need our best climbers. Rosa, Miguel,_ ” Bruce said to the 11 and 14 year old siblings who’d transported drugs for Ferreiro until Inferno had given them another option, “ _that’s you. You’ll need to get up to the balcony below Ferreiro’s – on the fourth floor – tie the ladders to the balcony and unroll them. Once you’ve done that, come back down and go back to the favela._ ” The siblings may have had to grow up fast – and the eldest was only three years younger than Bruce – but he had no intention of putting their lives in danger. “ _Gael and I will go up the ladders, get up to Ferreiro’s balcony and open the window. The five of you,”_ Bruce said to the men and women he and Jacqueline had been training, “ _will follow us. We’ll get inside, find Ferreiro and make him give us the passcode to the safe._ ” One of the former spies had told them about the safe where Ferreiro kept records of the drugs he bought and sold. “ _We’ll restrain Ferreiro, call the police and the media and tell them the address and the combination to the safe. Ferreiro will go to prison and people will see what’s happening in the favelas. The government will have to do something about it then._ ”

The group cheered.

**Gotham City**

**The Present Day**

In Gotham City, the best place to arrange a meeting is an abandoned warehouse in the Industrial Quarter. This is because, without an address, finding the right abandoned warehouse in the Industrial Quarter is like finding a needle in a haystack. Of needles. In a field full of haystacks of needles. This makes it much more difficult to spy on the meeting.

One such warehouse was at 6th Street and Paladins’ Row. There was a church called the Church of God’s Paladins fifteen blocks south, which was what gave Paladins’ Row its name. The church belonged to the Dumasian denomination of Christianity, based around the heterodoxy of Paul Dumas, a Crusader who became a monk and was burnt at the stake for criticising the Pope. The Order of Saint Dumas granted the veteran monk sainthood, and the mainstream Catholic Church had recently followed suit. The Order remained underground for some time, but spread through France and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as Portugal and the British Isles. The Church of God’s Paladins was the oldest Dumasian church in all of America, built by members of the Order who had come to the city to escape the witch hunts taking place in Europe at the time. The Order soon got a foothold in Gotham, and many connect them to the city’s, well, gothic culture and aesthetic.

6th Street got its name by being the sixth east-to-west street from the southern tip of Miagani, the largest of Gotham’s islands, often mistaken for the entire city to the chagrin of Arkham Island, the Royal, Norchester, and Bludhaven. Especially Bludhaven.

Gotham’s Brooklyn was not happy to be lumped in with Gotham’s Manhattan.

As such, this is where the Skeleton Crew arrived just before midnight. They were the first ones at the meeting, followed by Vale. A few minutes later, three attorneys entered the warehouse.

The attorney in the two-piece black-and-white suit was the first to speak. “Sarah, Jim, good to see you.”

“You too, Dent,” Essen replied while Gordon greeted Dent with a nod.

“Whoa, hold on,” Bullock interrupted. “Who the hell are you?”

“Harvey, Harvey. Harvey, Harvey,” Gordon introduced the two Harveys. “Are they in on the plan too?” Gordon asked Dent, looking at Finch and Dawes.

“Loeb’s a glorified mob boss. I’ll enjoy bringing him to justice,” Dawes replied.

“And Falcone sent his nephew to shoot up my office,” Finch said. “If taking down Loeb means screwing Falcone over, I’m in.”

“Good,” Bennet said. “Because we have a lead, and some help from the DA’s office would be really useful.”

“Before we get to discussing that,” Vale said, “there’s one more person who’s not here yet.”

“Actually,” a new, deep and rough voice spoke, “I _am_ here.”

While Bullock silently freaked out and nearly jumped out of his skin, the Bat of the East End stepped out of the shadows. He’d repaired his old costume, which must have helped with the ‘blending in with the shadows’ part of his skill set.

“How long have you been standing there?” Dent asked.

“That’s not relevant.”

“We’re you waiting there until everyone got here, or just so you could make a dramatic entrance?” asked Finch.

“That’s _also_ not relevant.”

“Now that _everyone’s_ here – vigilantes included,” Yin said, shooting a glare at the Bat, “let’s not waste any more time and get to discussing the plan. There’s a drug dealer in Agga called Archie Mitchell. According to Bennet, we could get this dealer to testify against Flass.”

“About what?” Finch questioned. “A good defence attorney will be able to shoot your case down like a clay pigeon if you just get any old dirt on Flass from Mitchell.”

“There are a few cold cases against Flass,” Dawes said. “If we get Mitchell to provide evidence for one of _them_ then it’s not a new case, it’s an old case with new evidence.”

“That’s good,” Gordon said. “And if we can make a case against Flass, we can get _him_ to testify against Loeb.”

“There’s a cop in Agga who’s happy to help us,” Bennet explained. “But we might need some additional help investigating Archie Mitchell,” he said, looking at the Bat.

“I’ll see what I can do,” the Bat said.

/\\-^|^-/\

_I should really have my own show_ , Cash Tankinson thought to himself, _‘Cash Tankinson: Action Cop’. Now there’s a good title._

Cash Tankinson was in a police car outside of an apartment block in Scurvy City. The place wasn’t officially called that - the nine-hundred unit housing project was officially called Skirley Apartments, but like most housing projects after Linseed’s attempts at revitalising the city, Skirley went to hell. The unsafe and quite literally _toxic_ construction probably had something to do with that. Not that the people running it suffered any repercussions, of course.

But Cash Tankinson, Action Cop, wasn’t here to bring the people who created this place to justice. Just one of that rats that had taken up residence in the rotten woodwork: Archer “Archie” Mitchell, a drug dealer who’d dealt with the GCPD before, if in a more amicable context. That’s why Cash Tankinson hadn’t gone in an undercover car: he was hoping the GCPD would be recognised.

Archie Mitchell, white suit and excess of bling, swaggered down the sidewalk and grinned when he saw the police car. He walked up to the vehicle and tapped on the window, greeting the officers with a cheerful “good morning officers, what can I do for you today?”

The window rolled down to reveal that the man inside was _not_ one of his standard associates. This man was wearing a trenchcoat, fedora and sunglasses.

“Actually,” Cash Tankinson replied, “there is one thing.” He opened the door, stepped out and shoved the drug dealer onto the front of the car. While Mitchell tried to process what was happening, Tankinson cuffed his hands.

“You’re under arrest, _punk_!” Tankinson yelled into the drug dealer’s ear. “For the possession and sale of narcotics, and for bribing police officers. You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in court.”

‘ _Cash Tankinson: Action Cop. He always reads them their rights. Just because he’s an Action Cop doesn’t mean he’s a bad cop’. That’s a good line for the commercial,_ Cash Tankinson thought to himself.

/\\-^|^-/\

“I didn’t do nothing!”

“Actually, Mr Mitchell, we have plenty of evidence that you’ve been distributing narcotics all over Agga,” Detective Bennet replied. “And there’s a good chance you’ll get the maximum sentence. How well do you think you’ll fare in Arkham?”

Archie Mitchell gulped.

They were in an interrogation room – blank, bright light, steel table: exactly what film and television had taught people to expect.

“Fortunately for you,” Bennet continued talking, “we’re willing to offer you a deal. All you have to do is tell us everything you know about any of…” Bennet trailed off and placed three files on the table. All of them had the name ‘Detective Arnold Flass’ written on them. “These cases.”

Archie Mitchell considered his options. On the one hand, he risked going to prison if they actually managed to convict him. On the other hand, if he took their deal he’d be pissing off Flass, and he might still go to prison. “I want a lawyer.”

On the other side of the glass, Bullock turned to Gordon. “Less than ten minutes in. Pay up.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Archie Mitchell had been allowed to go home thanks to good old blatant corruption, but he’d soon regret that. As he poured himself a glass of bourbon, Mitchell felt an iron grip on his shoulder. He dropped the glass and the bottle, causing them to smash on the floor, as he threw a punch at his assailant….

And got his arm painfully twisted for his troubles.

As if the pain wasn’t bad enough, he got to see who’d attacked him in his home. The cape and cowl, the black lenses, the _ears_ \- the Bat was easy to recognise and now Mitchell was terrified.

“They say I don’t feel pain,” the Bat growled. His voice was deep and rough - not to as much of an extreme as some had said, but still intimidating. “But I _have_ known pain. And I know how to cause it.”

The Bat leaned in closer. “If I were you,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t refuse to testify against Flass. You’re going to make enemies either way, but be careful which ones they are.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Johnny Vitti was not a happy man.

His subordinates had just informed his beloved uncle, Don Falcone, that a bunch of troublemakers were getting close to taking down Arnold Flass. Falcone’s response? ‘While it would be useful to have a policeman in our debt, we cannot trust Arnold Flass. If they’re going to imprison him, let them.’ Vitti respected his uncle, so he hadn’t said anything.

In his uncle’s presence, anyway.

“What is that old fool thinking!?” He yelled, pacing back and forth around his mansion’s swimming pool. “If we let them get Flass, all of our influence over the GCPD will be at risk!”

“Uh, boss?” a henchman said quietly, scared of being shot but glad that the Falcone empire provided all of its employees with health insurance.

“What!?”

“You know that medallion we were going to auction off?”

“You _lost the Medallion of Bast!?_ ”

“Actually, someone stole it.”

Vitti yelled in frustration, then took three deep breaths.

“ _Fine_. I’m _fine_ ,” he hissed. “Well, figure out what moron thinks they can steal from me and have them filled with lead. And _you_ ,” Vitti turned to another henchman, “we have to take care of our _other_ problem. Maybe it’s time to let Birthday Boy out again.”

That night, the Bat broke into Vitti’s mansion and retrieved the recording devices he’d planted the previous day. Twenty-four hours’ worth of audio is a lot to go through, but with Alfred and John helping, it would only take eight hours.

Just over eight hours later, the three of them went over their notes and Bruce learned from Alfred that Birthday Boy was a serial killer who’s M.O. was kidnapping teenage girls, leaving a cupcake with a birthday candle in it on their windowsill and killing them after twenty-four hours. He hadn’t been caught, but he had become inactive.

/\\-^|^-/\

_I should have a theme song_ , Cash Tankinson mused to himself as he returned home. _If a technicolour platypus gets to have a theme song, I should definitely have a theme song._

Cash Tankinson opened the door and stepped into his apartment. It was dark, so he turned on the light. The room was part kitchen and part living room: it had an oven and a fridge, but it also had a couch and a television.

“Who am I kidding?” Cash Tankinson thought out loud as he put his hat on the hat rack. “I can’t compete with the platypus. Nobody can.” He put his trenchcoat on the hat rack too.

Cash Tankinson opened the door to his bedroom and felt a draft. He paused. Had he left the window open? He stepped into the room and saw a small object on the windowsill. There had been _nothing_ on the windowsill when he’d left in the morning.

Cash Tankinson reached for his gun, but a pair of muscular arms seized him from behind and something sharp flashed in the dark.

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce _really_ needed to finish that grappling gun. It had taken him five tries to throw the grappling hook high enough to climb onto the fire escape. Well, two and three, but he’d had to start again because the first time the hook landed in the wrong place and he fell into a dumpster.

He’d already finished all the components, now he just had to put it together.

He _could_ have just broken into the building, made his way up the stairs and broken into an apartment on the first floor to get to the fire escape that way, but the killer had already done that and as a result there were forensic cops all over the first floor.

Bruce reached the window to Tankinson’s apartment and carefully checked to make sure that it was empty. Once he was sure of that, he scrubbed the bottom of his shoes clean of any dirt so he wouldn’t leave any obvious footprints. Then he stepped in through the open window - _carefully,_ so he wouldn’t touch the windowsill - and took the camera out of his belt.

Just looking at the size of the blood splatter, Bruce could tell that the arteries in Tankinson’s neck had been cut. There were other arteries with that much pressure, but the position of the blood in relation to Tankinson’s body made that unlikely: the majority of the blood was around the far corner of the ceiling. The most likely explanation was that Tankinson’s head had been tilted back and he’d been lifted off his feet by the killer. He must have been grabbed from behind and the killer must have been taller than him.

Judging by the size of his footprints, the killer was taller than _Bruce_. Speaking of which, the prints were muddy and Bruce could tell that Birthday Boy - he could read lips, so he knew that the cops had found a cupcake on the windowsill and taken it as evidence, there was no need to pretend Birthday Boy wasn’t the unsub here - had been wearing boots. He took a sample of the mud and several photos of the footprints and the blood splatter, then left the same way he’d come in.

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon had been shocked when he’d heard of Tankinson’s death. And _Birthday Boy_ was considered a suspect? Why would he deviate from his pattern that much? That thought took root in Gordon’s head like a weed as he drove home. He thought it as he entered his apartment block, he thought it as he walked up the stairs, and he thought it when he entered his apartment.

“Barbara, I’m home!”

No answer. No red-headed blur rushing out to welcome him home, no anti-authoritarian rock music blaring from his teenage daughter’s bedroom. The house was silent.

“Barbara?” Gordon was trying not to think of what he feared, but it was futile. He was terrified by the time he knocked on Barbara’s bedroom door. “Everything okay?”

Still no answer. “Is it okay if I come in?”

Silence.

For a split second, reason returned to Gordon’s mind. He’d taught Barbara what to do if something went wrong while he was gone. The door wasn’t closed, not all the way. It stayed that way when Jim pulled on the handle. He looked down. There was a crumpled-up ball of paper there, keeping the door open.

Jim picked it up and opened the paper. There were three hand signs drawn on it: a clenched fist with the thumb over the forefinger and middle finger, an open fist with the thumb just touching the middle finger, then the clenched fist again.

Jim knew _exactly_ what that meant. He opened the door and stepped into the room.

The window was open. There was a cupcake on the windowsill, with a single candle in it.

Jim’s phone rang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Bludhaven is Gotham's Brooklyn, Agga is Gotham's Harlem. I got the name by researching the etymology of Harlem - turns out, it's a distortion of the name of a place from the Netherlands so I picked another place name (der Haag) and turned it into Agga.  
> Please leave comments.


	10. Chapter Ten

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five Years Ago**

The plan had gone off without a hitch.

So far.

But when the seven members of Inferno who were on the ‘attack squad,’ as Bruce had nicknamed it, got into Ferreiro’s home, they realized that something was wrong.

Because there were signs of a struggle everywhere. Torn curtains, overturned furniture, broken glass where Bruce could see there used to be a mirror dividing the room in two. “ _Somebody else already got here_ ,” he whispered.

Gael raised an eyebrow. “ _You think?_ ”

“ _As long as they didn’t kill Ferreiro, the plan still works,_ ” one of the other five - Luca - pointed out. “ _We should split up. That will make it easier to find him_.”

And find Ferreiro they did. Lying on his bedroom floor, in a pool of his own blood, a bullet hole in his head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce saw a human figure sneaking out through the open bedroom window.

He tapped Gael on the shoulder and, with a subtle tilt of his head, indicated that he was going to follow the figure. Hopefully they didn’t notice that they’d been noticed.

Gael nodded, just as subtly. “ _We won’t get anything from him_ ,” Gael said. “ _But if we call the police and they search this place, they might still find the safe. Assuming it hasn’t been emptied already by whoever killed Ferreiro.”_

The group voiced their assent. Bruce handed Gael his disposable phone.

Then he ran towards the window and scampered up the side of the building, following the killer.

He caught up with him on the roof.

“ _Why did you kill Ferreiro?_ ” Bruce shouted.

The figure turned and looked at him. He was tall, blond with a goatee, and had blue eyes. There was something intimidating about him. “ _I was paid to do it. I’m a mercenary, ami_.”

A loud buzzing came from the sky above them. When Bruce looked up, he had to blink because of the bright light. A rope ladder dropped down in front of the mercenary. “ _I’d say ‘au revoir’,_ ” he yelled above the noise of the helicopter as he climbed up to the ladder, “ _but you won’t see me again!_ ”

The helicopter climbed into the sky, leaving Bruce behind on the roof.

**Gotham City, USA**

**The Present Day**

It was an unknown number.

Jim answered the call.

“You should have played along, Gordon.”

Jim’s blood froze. “Vitti, I swear to _God_ if you let _anything_ happen to my daughter, I’ll-“

“Ah-ah-ah,” Vitti interrupted Jim. “I’m doing the talking, not you. See, you never learned to just… let things _happen_. Turn a blind eye and let the powerful people do as we please. We _deserve_ that courtesy, we’re the ones with the power. But you’ve consistently shown us disrespect.” He paused. “Now, my uncle’s willing to let you get away with that, but I’m not like that. I’m not as weak as he is. So you play along, or _you_ won’t be the one getting punished for your misbehaviour. That’s what you’re scared of, isn’t it?”

Jim bit back a retort. He couldn’t risk it, couldn’t give that sadist a reason to hurt Barbara.

“Now,” Vitti continued, “here’s what I want you to do.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“What did he want?” Bullock asked.

“He told me to take Mitchell’s testimony and burn it, to film myself doing it and send him the video… to take Mitchell out of protective custody and shoot him in the head. Film that too.”

“Gordon,” Essen put her hand on his. “We’ll find Barbara. I promise you that: we’ll find her and bring her home safe.”

“How? The second Vitti sees you coming, he’ll have Barbara…” Jim’s voice broke.

“He won’t.”

Everybody in the room turned to look at Essen.

“Vitti’s a coward,” she explained. “He’s not going to be anywhere near Barbara. Unless he has cameras around the outside of wherever Birthday Boy is taking his victims, he’s not going to see us coming.”

“And he’s _not_ going to have cameras around BB’s home,” Bennet added, “because there’s no way Vitti would risk being linked to a serial killer if someone decides to follow the money and find out who bought the cameras.”

“Now let’s get to work and find out where your daughter is,” Montoya said. “Once we’ve done that, we go in guns blazing.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“And _why_ , exactly, are you boiling mud?”

Bruce kept his eyes on the apparatus, but he answered Alfred’s question. “I need to measure the water content and I need to obtain a dry sample of the sediment. Then I’ll have to separate out the minerals - hence the sieves, solvents and filters - and analyse the composition of each one individually. Once I know exactly what is in the mud, I can figure out where Birthday Boy’s been and possibly where he came from.”

“And you’ll want me to compare the location’s history to the timeline and see if there’s a connection,” Alfred guessed.

“Exactly.”

“In that case, I’ll find Blake. We’re going to need to get all of that done as quickly as possible.”

Bruce turned. “What’s happened?” After Tankinson’s death, Bruce had asked Alfred to do recon on every other member of the ‘Alliance’.

“Gordon’s daughter is missing. There was a birthday cupcake left on the windowsill in her room.”

/\\-^|^-/\

That night, in two very different places, a police station and an underground bunker, two similar discussions took place. Neither of them was meant to exchange information, just go over what every participant already knew to form a conclusion.

“The most common minerals in the sediment were granite and rust,” Bruce explained in the Bunker. “The amount is so high, the mud definitely came from Arkham Island, and the sediment must have come from a building built before the seventies. Judging by the water content, I’d say the area’s experienced heavy rain or flooding.”

Meanwhile, at the station, Bennet and Yin explained the same conclusion. “There are several buildings on Arkham Island that fit that criteria,” Bennet said. “But we know that Birthday Boy’s left mud at all the previous crime scenes, so chances are he goes through the area a lot.”

Yin continued Bennet’s explanation. “The profile - and his past activities - say he wouldn’t frequent a place where he’s likely to be seen, which means that it’s an abandoned building. That narrowed down the possible locations, and one place stood out.”

Bennet spoke again. “Victoria Tower. One of John Linseed’s housing projects. During Abe Bean’s time as mayor, the housing projects lost funding. Victoria Tower was one of the first to fall apart. Right now, the only people who live there are a few squatters.”

“Daniel Duncan tried to get the squatters out of there,” Bullock recalled. “Tried everything from actually _helping_ them to having them brutalised. It was what cost him the re-election.”

At the Bunker, Alfred was explaining the same thing. “Blake and I looked at the list of squatters reported to be living there and we found something interesting.”

John nodded, placing three photographs on the worktable: two women and one man. “This is Ramona Salinger,” he said, pointing to the photograph of a blonde woman with a sunken face. “She suffered from schizophrenia. Once she had a kid, she started self-medicating…” John paused. “But she ended up developing a substance abuse problem… Eventually, she overdosed…”

Alfred took over from John. He knew the kid had probably seen too many children on the streets who’d lost a parent to a drug overdose and the butler wasn’t going to let him torture himself even more. “Her son, Ray Salinger, was raised by Amanda Grant. Birthday Boy’s first victim.” At this, Alfred pointed to a teenage girl with long red hair. “When Ramona died, Amanda was nine, and Ray was eight. Three years later, Duncan’s attempt to clean out the Tower got them both put into care. Amanda begged for Ray to be allowed to stay with her, but the foster system wouldn’t listen. They were separated and eventually, Ray turned violent.”

“This is Ray Salinger,” Bullock explained at the station. “At age thirteen, he was put in juvie for assaulting his foster parents with a knife. A year later he was released. Then he disappeared. The only time he’s seen again is a few months later, when a security camera shows him stealing fifteen cupcakes from a bakery. _Two days_ before Amanda Grant’s birthday, when she was killed.”

“It’s unlikely Ray wanted to kill Amanda,” Montoya said. “Her death was probably an accident, Ray was unusually strong because he’d come into contact with Venom in prison. But killing her must have been the trigger that caused Ray to start killing. He kidnaps a girl who resembles Amanda, tries to hold a birthday party for her, then when she tries to escape, he gets angry and accidentally kills her.”

“Victoria Tower is probably where he’s taking his victims,” Essen finished. “It will be where he’s taken Barbara. Now that we know who he is and the origin of his pathology, we can use that to get through to him.”

As the GCPD got ready to go, back at the Bunker, the vigilante trio without police resources were debating how to get to the island in time.

“The monorail stops too far from the building,” Alfred pointed out, “and the bridge is still unsafe. But taking a boat might work. I’ll call Harriet.”

“Great plan,” John said. “But the beach is too bloody far from the building! How are we supposed to - oh damn, you’ve got me saying ‘bloody’ too now.”

“It’s not too far away for the grappling gun,” Bruce said. He looked at the rifle-like device, complete if not for the unattached motor. “Alfred, hand me a screwdriver.”

/\\-^|^-/\

The walled housing project stuck out like a sore thumb. Most of the buildings on Arkham Island, particularly this near the beach, were single-storey and pressed up against each other. The tallest other building in the vicinity was across the monorail from the project, closer to the beach.

“There it is,” Harriet shouted over the noise of the boat’s motor, pointing to the building. “Victoria Tower. _How_ do you plan on getting there again?”

“With this!” Bruce replied, taking out the grappling gun.

Harriet’s jaw dropped. “What the,” the next word was inaudible due to the engine, “is that,” another inaudible word, “contraption supposed to be?”

“It’s a grappling gun!” Alfred replied.

“What!?”

“Grappling gun! He built it himself!”

“And you _let_ him!?”

Meanwhile, Bruce got on his knees and set the grappling gun up. He turned the flat arrow that acted as a wind vane so it wouldn’t get in the way of the grappling hook and would show the direction of the wind, adjusted the scope to compensate for distance and wind speed, set the motor to stop the rope at the right length, turned so that the wind vane was pointing in a direction parallel to the gun, rested the butt of the rifle against his shoulder and pulled the safety pin.

“Wish me luck,” he said. When Harriet and Alfred simultaneously said “good luck” (and Alfred handed Harriet a set of noise-cancelling headphones), Bruce pulled the trigger.

There was a loud crack, then the sound of the rope flying out, being pulled along by the hook as it travelled through the air. The hook hit the building and a short while after, the motor stopped the rope from unwinding any further. The motor started to move backwards - since the hook was fixed in place, this pulled the gun up to the building, and Bruce with it.

The Bat of the East End stood as he was lifted off the ground.

All that happened in a fraction of a second. Soon, the wall of Victoria Tower was in front of Bruce.

Bruce pulled the lever to stop the motor and stuck his legs out in front of the rest of his body so that his feet would break the glass as he came sailing through the window. Glass scattered all over the floor. (Thank whatever gods were listening that he _did_ hit the window and not the wall.)

Something in the grappling gun snapped. Bruce made a mental note to be careful when he retrieved the device.

“My window!” Bruce heard someone shout as he climbed in through the hole in the wall. Ignoring the pain in his abdomen (turns out, those kinds of acrobatic manoeuvers aren’t always the best idea) that matched up with his still-healing wounds from the SWAT fight, he turned to the long-haired man who’d shouted and was now pointing a sharpened stick at the Bat.

“I promise you,” Bruce said, “I _will_ fix this as soon as I can.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Barbara was scared, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. The guy who’d brought her here – who kept calling her Amanda – had left. He’d locked the door, but he hadn’t tied her up, so Barbara was able to explore the room for an escape route.

She found it: a square door some way off the floor, a dumbwaiter. Barbara opened the door. The shaft was empty, the dumbwaiter was probably on the first floor. Barbara climbed through the door and clung to the wooden boards. The gaps between boards would come in useful. She closed the door as far as she could from the inside.

She hadn’t learned rock-climbing or abseiling or anything else like that, but she had a rough idea of the principles that applied. If she didn’t want to fall to her death, she’d have to be careful. Stand with her feet angled to the sides, so a greater surface area is resting on the top of the board. Grip a higher board with both hands.

That was the easy part: now she had to manage to step down without losing her balance.

With her left hand, she let go of the board, grabbing onto a lower one instead. She copied the motion with her right leg, then once she was sure her right foot was secure, moved her right hand down to the board below the one her left hand was holding. Then she stepped down with her left foot. Left foot, left hand, right foot, right hand. Wash, rinse, repeat.

She travelled a floor down when she heard a voice coming from above.

“Happy birthday Amanda. I baked you a –“

The voice went silent for a minute. Barbara stayed still.

“Amanda? Why are you hiding? It’s your birthday, remember?”

She looked up, and was relieved not to see a burlap-sack covered face staring down at her. He hadn’t found her. A door creaked and Barbara heard heavy footsteps moving away.

She didn’t know what that meant, but she had to find a way out of this place fast. That was going to be much easier once she wasn’t climbing around inside a dumbwaiter.

/\\-^|^-/\

Gordon had stormed into the building, Bullock following him. From opposite ends of the abandoned housing project, the cops and the Bat both searched the place from top to bottom.

They were all on the third floor when they heard the scream.

“That was Barbara!” Gordon said.

Bullock was terrified, but he knew he couldn’t let Gordon panic, so he just said “Now we know she’s still alive, and where she is.”

‘The scream came from this floor’, Bruce thought several rooms away. ‘From where I’m facing, I’d say… ten o’clock.’ He turned left.

There was another scream: a man, roaring in pain. Bruce, Gordon and Harvey all started running towards Barbara.

/\\-^|^-/\

“Why did you hurt me Amanda?” Birthday Boy hissed, pulling the wooden spike out of his thigh. “That’s not nice. You always told me to be nice.”

Barbara was on the other side of the room, brandishing a second spike. There were two doors in the room, and she’d broken off part of each doorframe to make her weapons. She meant to use them. “Stay back,” she warned.

Birthday Boy didn’t listen. He stepped towards her.

Right at that moment, two people yelled “Freeze!”

Birthday Boy whirled around to find Bullock and Gordon aiming their guns at him. “You can’t take Amanda away again,” he growled. “I won’t let you!”

“She’s not Amanda,” a third voice said. Birthday Boy turned to see the Bat of the East End standing in the open doorway. “I’m sorry Ray,” he said. “But Amanda is never coming back.”

“What?” Birthday Boy asked. The anger had gone out of his voice. “Did she… forget about me?” He was close to tears.

“That’s not what happened, Ray,” the Bat promised. “Amanda just had to go really far away. But she still remembers you, and she’s worried about you.”

“Why would she be worried about me?”

“Ray, you’ve done bad things. You may not remember all of them, but you have. Amanda’s worried that if you don’t stop and let us help you, you’re going to get hurt. Please. Let us help you. For her.”

Ray shrunk in on himself. “I’ll let you help me. For Amanda.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“The grappling gun worked, but it’s trashed now.”

“What did you expect?” Alfred asked. “You grappled out of a moving boat, and swung through a window.”

Bruce shrugged. “Rebuilding it won’t take long. I built it from scratch the first time, without any ideas of how to make it work, but now I have something to work with.” He paused. “I wonder if there’s a way to make it smaller.”

“It propels a rope strong enough to hold a human’s weight seventeen stories into the air, along with a metal hook at the end of the rope, and includes a motor that makes it possible to travel up said rope. Short of science fiction, you’re not going to be making it smaller.”

They both laughed.

“By the way…” Bruce said, “thanks.”

“For what?”

“For looking out for me. I know you were there, in that building on the other side of the tracks. Let me guess: you took the monorail, got off at the station and ran there as fast as you could?”

“That’s about right,” Alfred admitted.

“So thanks,” Bruce repeated. “There’s just one thing I want to know.”

“Ask away.”

“If things had gone wrong… would you have killed Ray?”

“No,” Alfred replied. “No, I know how you feel about that. I would have aimed for the knees.”

“Shooting a guy in the knee through two windows at different heights while that guy is fighting the person you’re trying to protect? That sounds like a difficult shot.”

“Are you kidding? Compared to the shots I made back in the marines, that would have been a bloody cakewalk,” Alfred bragged. “But just because I’m looking out for you, doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off.”

Bruce pouted.

“I mean it. That grappling gun did a bloody number on your abdomen and until you heal I am not letting you get back to fighting out on the streets.”

“I can handle it, Alfred.”

“No you can’t.”

“Fine,” Bruce acquiesced. “But there is one thing I want to do first. I have a promise to keep.”

/\\-^|^-/\

As expected, Flass broke down the second he knew he was going to lose the case. He’d been smart enough to take notes on every conversation he’d ever had with Loeb and once the deal was made he sang like a canary.

Loeb was arrested while packing his bags. He would have skipped town by then, but he wasn’t willing to leave behind any of his memorabilia. The former commissioner was put on trial and convicted.

Once the bureaucrats realised how much the GCPD had been reduced in number as a result of the arrests that followed Loeb’s trial, they spent the next two weeks having a collective aneurism as they tried to figure out how to fill the gaps. Eventually they came to a unanimous decision: make the new commissioner the person to blame for this mess as an act of revenge.

And so, forty-three days after the incident on Arkham Island, reporters and civilians alike gathered in front of the GCPD precinct. Standing behind a podium, Essen was about to make her first speech as the Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department. The rest of the Skeleton Crew stood behind her.

“Once, Gotham was a great city and the police force was proud to have the faith, trust and respect of the people they protected and serve. But then things changed. And they never changed back. People talk about the depression that started in the late sixties like it’s over, but it’s not: things are worse than ever in Gotham. And until recently, the GCPD was a prime example of that deterioration. The only people the police protected or served were those who preyed on the innocent. The police took bribes, sold drugs, enforced the mafia’s decrees: they had become criminals.” Commissioner Essen posed. “But those of us who still believed in Gotham City did not stand idly. We opposed the crime and corruption we saw all around us. We took it upon ourselves to expose the injustices of Gillian Loeb’s regime. We were threatened and intimidated, but nevertheless we persisted. And finally – at long last – we succeeded.”

Gordon, standing to Essen’s left, sensed that something was wrong. Slowly, he turned his head as Essen continued talking.

“Today, that success brings in a new age. A new dawn for Gotham City. There will be more challenges to come, but we, the Gotham City Police Department, will face them. And I promise you, we will earn Gotham’s respect.”

As the crowd began to applaud, Gordon saw it. A small, red dot hovering on Essen’s shirt. A rifle scope.

Gordon lunged towards Essen and a shot rang out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger! :D  
> And because I'm mean I put the cliffhanger after a time skip, so you'll have to wait until chapter 13 for the resolution. Sorry.  
> On the bright side, the next chapter will introduce a character who hasn't appeared in this story yet, but who is an extremely important character in the Batman franchise.  
> Please leave a review. Constructive criticism is welcome, and compliments are especially welcome.


	11. Chapter Eleven

“So, the plan’s worked and Loeb’s losing his trial. Now what?”

“What do you mean, Alfred?”

“Well you’re not going to stop, are you? So what are you going to do next?”

John mumbled something.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, lad,” Alfred said. The three of them had decided to celebrate their recent victory by getting takeaway from Big Belly Burger. John was currently wolfing down a Jumbo Cheeseburger with a side of fries.

John swallowed the cheeseburger. “I said: ‘I agree with Cockney Jeeves’.”

“I prefer ‘Bloody Crazy Jeeves’,” Alfred said.

“Branden’s gone off the radar,” Bruce said, “so finding him is on my to-do list. But then there’s also the cat burglar.”

“Cat burglar?” John asked. “Refresh my memory.”

“For a few months now, there’s been a spree of burglaries. The only clear connection between them is that they were all the work of an expert.”

 “But…” said Alfred.

“But around the time that we formed our alliance with the Skeleton Crew and the DA’s office, the MO changed. Every burglary since then, the item stolen has been somehow connected to cats.”

“So the burglar got cocky and took up a theme?” asked John.

“It’s possible, but something tells me there’s more to it than that,” Bruce replied. “Either way, I’ll have to talk to Vale to see what she knows.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Long time no see.”

Vale almost spilled her coffee. She made sure to give the Bat a glare for that.

“You can blame yourself for that,” she said. “This corruption scandal is shaping up to be the biggest story of the year - not just in the city either. This is _national news_ big.” The Bat didn’t respond, so Vale continued. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“Do you know anything about the cat burglaries that have been going on for the past few months?”

Vale laughed. “Do I know anything…? Of _course_ I know. Who did you think you were talking to?”

She opened a drawer in her filing cabinet and took out a file. “Here are my notes, if you can read them. Knox tells me I have illegible handwriting. Basically, most of those high-skill burglaries have similarities in methodology, so the same person was probably behind each of them. The same person, by the looks of it, as the one behind the cat-themed thefts that started up more recently. Some people have started calling this thief the Cat.”

“Any idea where this thief might strike next?”

“Soon enough they’ll have an opportunity too great to pass up: _le Chat Emeraude_.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“This is _le Chat Emeraude_ ,” Bruce pointed at a photograph of a green statue of a tortoiseshell cat.

“’The Emerald Cat’,” Alfred translated. “It was made from pure emerald as a gift for Louis XVI. During the French Revolution, some revolutionaries tried to chip it up and sell the pieces, but monarchists recaptured the statue and smuggled it out of France.”

Bruce nodded. “The statue lost part of its left ear thanks to those revolutionaries, but the rest of it ended up safe and sound in Vienna. It remained there until Hitler engineered a coup in Austria, when the statue went missing only to turn up after the war in the home of a Nazi war criminal. It was placed in a museum in America until it went missing a dozen years ago. Recently, it’s turned up again.”

“Nice history lesson,” Blake said, clapping slowly, “but what was the point of that?”

“It was bought by a socialite from upstate Gotham called Elaine Travers. She’s holding an auction to sell it on her yacht, right in Gotham City. Vale says that’s most likely the Cat’s next target.”

“So, what’s the plan?” Alfred asked.

“I’ll use one of my aliases – not Matches Malone, for once – to get invited to the auction. I’ll take some more money from the Vault, because Vale told me that at this auction, the payments will have to be made in cash, so a credit card won’t work. When the Cat strikes, I’ll be ready.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Rick Steward, private investigator, had arrived on the yacht wearing a black fedora and a matching jacket. He’d managed to get himself an invitation by charming the hostess at a party they had both attended. Stewart had already befriended Bill Earle, the chief executive officer of Wayne Enterprises and now Earle was introducing Steward to the other guests. “Ah, Angela, this is Rick, he’s a private eye. Can I call you Rick? Rick, this is Angela Pegg, she collects French antiques. She’s one of _the company’s_ biggest stockholders.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Pegg,” Rick shook the elderly woman’s hand.

Angela Pegg was accompanied by her doctor, Joseph Wallace. There were also Tia and Riley Travers, twin sisters and distant-ish cousins of Elaine. In total, there were twenty-seven people on board: twenty-six guests and the hostess. Rick planned to investigate any connections between each of them - he was, after all, here for a reason.

The yacht was called the Feline Fatale – as if it hadn’t been asking to be burgled by the cat-themed thief already – and was mostly white, with purple handrails. There were lifeboats around the edge and Steward could clearly see the engines.

“Good afternoon, everyone,” a woman said. She was standing on the sun deck, overlooking the guests. She had dark skin, bangs, a British accent and a flowing purple dress. Rick recognised her immediately: Elaine Travers, current owner of _Le Chat Emeraude_. “It looks like we’re all here, so let’s set off and have a look at the reason we’ve all come, shall we?”

/\\-^|^-/\

“So, _Rick Steward_ ,” Tia Travers said, the palm of her hand on the detective’s upper arm, “what’s it like? Being a private eye?”

“It’s just like being a cop,” Rick said, “except it pays better and I actually get to say I do an _honest_ day’s _work_.”

Tia laughed uproariously.

“I see you and my sister are getting along,” Riley said as she walked up to the two. “Any interesting conversation?”

“Rick’s just telling me about his job,” Tia said. “He’s a _private investigator_ ,” she added in a stage whisper.

“Really?” Riley raised an eyebrow. “Any interesting cases?”

“Well, there _have_ been a few,” Rick said. “My friends have seen fit to give _titles_ to some of them. There was the Essay on Rouge,” he listed, “the Stamp of Five, the Tin Cane.”

“That last one sounds interesting,” Tia said.

“Oh, it was. It started when I got a call from the manager of a theatre company. They were preparing for a musical production of _Four Things and a Lizard_ and apparently there’d been a murder.”

The detective continued to tell the story of the case to the twins for some time.

The guests had been given a tour around the yacht, starting with a look at _le Chat Emerald_ itself: they saw the statue from profile (the side with the undamaged ear), behind a glass wall which in turn was behind a curtain in the back of the auction hall. There had been a few who were worried about the mysterious cat burglar attacking so, just to be safe, Elaine had allowed them to hide their money and other valuables in a safe, giving each guest the combination individually. She’d also reassured the guests that security cameras would tell them if anybody boarded the Feline Fatale. Now they were all in the dining room, some getting drinks from the bar, some getting food from the buffet and some simply talking amongst themselves.

Rick was just getting to the part about how he’d solved the case when Elaine came up behind them. “Mr Steward, hi, I’ve been meaning to get a hold of you all night.”

 “Well, I’m not going to keep a lady waiting,” Rick said. “How can I help?”

“It’s better if we discuss this in private,” Elaine said.

“Oh. That’s a shame. Well, Riley, Tia, we’ll continue this later.”

“At least tell us who it was,” Tia protested. “It was the janitor, wasn’t it?”

“No, it had to have been Halle,” Riley said.

“Actually, it was neither,” Rick said. “The killer was _Lance_.”

“Lance?” Tia asked in surprise. “But - _oh_ , that… that does make sense.”

“Well, ladies, I’ll see you later,” Rick said as he left with Elaine.

/\\-^|^-/\

Elaine Travers’ suite was one of the larger ones. That said, Rick Steward only saw the living room. The wallpaper was golden, as was the hand-woven Persian rug in the centre of the room, while the furniture and floorboards were made of dark mahogany wood. There was a grandfather clock stood against one of the walls and a painting of a seventeenth-century aristocrat (“Joseph Markov, he was a Duke of OstLuxemburg”, Elaine told him. “His great-grandson was the one who renamed it Markovia.”) mounted on the wall opposite.

“Take a seat, Mr Steward.”

Rick sat down in an expensive-looking armchair, with four oak legs and a seat made from some sort of rare silk.

“What do you think about the Cat, Mr Steward?”

“The statue? I’d say it’s worth five hundred grand, maybe even twice that. Why?”

“I’m not talking about the statue. I’m talking about this mysterious cat burglar who’s been terrorising the city. Do you think we’re at risk?”

“Well, yeah,” Rick said. “I mean you are auctioning off a cat statue on a yacht that has ‘feline’ in the name, so I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody tried to break in.”

“That’s why I want you to help me. I have the only key to the storage room here with me, but I need to know that le Chat Emeraude is secure, or if it isn’t, how somebody might try to steal it. Can you do that for me?”

“Sure. We’ll have to check your suite as well - the Cat could just break in here and take the key from you.”

Elaine laughed. “They’d have to force me to give it up, and that won’t be easy. Let me show you,” she said, lifting a painting off of the wall to reveal a rectangular slit. She reached into the slit and took out a revolver. “I can take care of myself. See for yourself.” Grabbing the gun by the barrel, she held the butt of the revolver out to Rick.

He seemed reluctant at first, but he took the gun and held it in his hand. It was custom made, but looking at the design he could tell this firearm would be a force to be reckoned with. He handed the weapon back to Elaine.

“Glad to know you’re safe,” he said. “Now to see if we can say the same about the statue.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Rick walked in a circle around le Chat, observing the room. The statue, with a smooth profile where it’s left ear should have been, stood on a podium in the centre of a room with four bare white walls. A bare lightbulb suspended from the ceiling illuminated the room. Just to the left of it was a silver metal air vent that ran across the ceiling, with a large square opening with an aluminium cover just a few inches before the window. As he walked, Rick identified any ways in he could. Occasionally, he would stop and look up or squint at the window. When he was done, he turned off the light, stepped through the metal door and closed the room behind him.

“Well?” Elaine asked.

“The statue’s safe,” Rick said. “As far as I can tell there are only three ways in: the door – but judging by that lock, you’d need the right key and three kinds of biometrics to get in that way – the window, which you’ve already told me is reinforced, and the vent. The vent’s definitely large enough to fit a person, but said person would either need a lot of time or make a lot of noise before they got to the room. Then they’d have to climb back into the vent to get out. Putting the vent covers back on would actually be the easy part compared to that.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce was still wearing his disguise as he stood on the upper deck at night. That way, if he ran into anyone, he’d be able to say that he was getting some fresh air since they’d still think he was an alias that he had based on a Sherlock Holmes noir AU he’d stopped writing when he was eleven years old.

It was a good thing the Travers twins didn’t even know those fanfics even existed or his cover would have been blown the second they’d asked him about his cases. Then again, if that had been a risk he’d have come up with a different backstory.

Anyway, right now he had one primary objective: spy on the other guests aboard the yacht. By his calculations, it would not take much time to plant surveillance equipment outside their suites – all the bedrooms had windows and he’d made sure to bring miniaturized microphones that could be attached to the glass. They’d transmit a radio signal to the computer in his own suite and allow him to learn more about the people on this boat. He’d take all the microphones down the next morning, before sunrise.

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce had now returned to his own suite and set up the computer. He’d managed to bug all of the guests’ rooms and had put on his headphones to listen for any useful information. He was holding a pen in his left hand and had a notepad next to the computer.

The first few microphones didn’t provide anything more than snoring. The first frequency to yield some helpful information was that of the microphone he’d placed outside Dr Wallace’s suite. It was one side of a conversation – Bruce guessed that the doctor was on the phone to someone – but one side was all he needed.

“I know I can’t afford to be spending money right now,” the good doctor said, “but just think how much this could be worth to an antiques collector! I could sell it for enough money to pay off my debts. Besides, I didn’t have a choice! Pegg wanted me to come and raise the bid at the auction and you know what she could do to my reputation!”

That was certainly interesting. Bruce wrote down ‘doctor in debt, blackmailed by Pegg?’ on his notepad.

The next time Bruce heard something unusual was when he switched to the frequency for the Travers twins’ suite. The sisters were having a discussion - almost a heated argument - in Riley’s room.

“I don’t like this, Riley,” Tia was saying. “I still think this is a terrible idea.”

“Calm down, sis! This whole thing will be over in a day; we get the payoff, we pack and we get off this boat as soon as it lands, and then we’re free!”

“But-“

“But nothing. Sis, next morning we’ll get the money and this briefcase will be _full_ of hundred dollar bills.”

Bruce wrote down ‘Travers twins - ‘payoff’ - maybe for an inside job’ on the paper.

The last frequency he checked was Earle’s.

“Well then _reschedule_ the meeting,” Earle said. Another conversation on the phone that Bruce would only hear one side of. “ _No_ , he can’t cancel! This meeting will decide my company’s future: all we have to do is bribe the right people, have Wayne declared dead, then the board will be able to vote to sell off his share in Wayne Enterprises to the public… Yes that’s still the plan, _that’s been the plan for years_.”

Bruce took his headphones off.

He’d heard enough, had enough information to follow up on and find out how the Cat planned to steal the statue.

Maybe… Maybe he should get some sleep.

/\\-^|^-/\

He was in the auction hall - there were less than thirty of them, so they were sat in tables of five or six. Steward was sitting at an oval-shaped table of five; to his left were Riley and Tia, to his right was a lawyer he hadn’t met before who was drinking copious amounts of alcohol (Miles Douglas, who’s marriage was falling apart because of his involvement in the Triad of Corruption, as the media was calling it already) and his wife, who was currently smoking a cigar.

The auction hall was incredibly noisy: almost all of the guests were having their own conversations; the Douglases were having a ‘whispered’ argument composed mainly of passive-aggressive insults, and the twins were badgering Rick with more questions about his work as a private detective.

“So, Rick, tell us more about the Case of the Tin Cane,” Riley said. “How did you figure out that Lance was the killer all along?”

“Well, it’s simple really: there were five people with a motive to kill the lead actor, three people who were in Vanessa’s costume room and could have replaced her character’s cane with the murder weapon, and only one person who had bought a cane similar to the murder weapon, who happened to be one of the people who couldn’t have been in the costume room,” he explained. “The only _logical_ explanation is that someone else had access to both the cane and the costume room, so I asked Halle more about how the cane - how and where she bought it, did she let anyone borrow it, when did it go missing, that kind of thing.”

“And?” Tia inquired. “What did she tell you?”

“She’d had her licence revoked a few days prior, so she needed someone to drive her. That someone was Lance. The day before the dress rehearsal, he called in the favour and asked to use her computer. It was after he left the apartment that she noticed the cane had gone missing. After that, all it took was getting everybody in a room together and explaining how I solved the case.”

“Why do you guys do that, anyway?” Tia asked.

“A magician never explains the trick,” Rick said. “ _But_ I’m willing to make an exception for you ladies.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “It’s so that when the culprit realises they’ve been caught, we can get to the door before they do.”

The twins laughed.

The sound of feedback pierced the noise. Gradually, the room went silent.

“Hello, everyone,” Elaine said into the microphone. “Boy, these things sure make a lot of noise, don’t they?” she laughed. “Anyway, I’m glad we’re all here. We’ll be getting to the auction shortly, but first let’s take another look at the grand prize: _le Chat Emeraude_.” Pronouncing the last three words in a perfect French accent, Elaine swung her left arm dramatically as the curtain was raised and the glass window was exposed again to reveal…

An empty room.

For two seconds, everybody was stunned. Then everybody panicked.

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce – as Rick - had volunteered to figure out how the statue could have been stolen, which was what he was now trying to do. The Cat had to still be on the boat – the security footage didn’t show anybody boarding or leaving the yacht – and the guests had been calmed when Elaine had opened the safe and shown them that their money and was still intact.

Rick Steward was wearing his fedora and jacket again.

_‘The storage room was secure, the only way in or out was through the door,_ ’ Bruce thought. ‘Anyone _getting in would need the right key, fingerprints and password, so how could the thief have gotten them? But is that the right question?’_ There was something bothering Bruce, but he couldn’t figure out what.

‘ _The ear.’_ Never mind, he _could_ figure out what. ‘ _Only part of the statue’s ear is supposed to be missing, not the whole thing. It could have lost the rest between now and the last time it was seen, but it’s too well-preserved for that: anybody who recognised its value wouldn’t let it be damaged and anybody who didn’t would take more than just an ear. Emerald doesn’t exactly break on accident. Which means the statue is a fake. But why would Elaine Travers make a fake as inaccurate as that if she was planning on selling it? Unless she wasn’t…’_

Bruce now had an idea of what had occurred. He put his disguise back on and left his suite to confirm his theory. He arrived at the door he was looking for and knocked.

“Rick!” Tia Travers said, smiling. “Is there anything we can help you with?”

“Actually,” the private eye said, “yes. I’ve got something on my mind. I was hoping the two of you could help me out. May I come in?”

Tia opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Be my guest. Riley!” she called, “Rick wants to talk to us!”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Elaine Travers isn’t really your cousin, is she?”

The twins gasped. “I have _no idea_ what you’re implying, Steward,” Riley said, “but I can tell you, whatever you think is going on, you’re damn wrong!”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “Really? So, if I said that I know that the statue that disappeared is a fake and it was never meant to be taken home by any of the guests, I’d be wrong? Would I also be wrong if I said that the safe all the guests put their money in has been emptied out while that briefcase in your room,“ he said to Riley, “is full of hundred-dollar bills?”

Riley was about to retort, but Tia sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “She paid us to pretend she’s a relative. Then this morning - before the auction - she came to our room and gave us the money.”

“Tia! Why would you-“

“We _already have_ the money, sis! And I never wanted it- _any_ of this - you did!”

“That’s none of _his_ business!”

“Probably not,” Steward said. “But the part you played in the theft is. I know who’s behind it now, but you two are free to go. Thank you for your help,” he tipped his hat to them and left.

/\\-^|^-/\

Bruce knew the Cat would be already making her escape, so he went straight to the lifeboats.

“Get in, or I’ll shoot you in the head.”

Bruce turned to see the Cat, still disguised as Ms Travers, sitting in a lifeboat and aiming her revolver at him, her finger on the trigger. When he looked at her legs, he saw that she was sitting on a large suitcase, which - if he had to hazard a guess - he’d say contained the guests’ money.

“The Cat, I presume,” he said as he stepped into the boat.

“You presume correctly, Bat,” she smirked. “Untie those ropes, will you? I don’t want to let go of the gun.”

The Bat undid the ropes and the boat dropped into the water.

“Now turn on the engine. Keep a hand on that rudder and get us to the shore.”

The Bat complied.

The Cat sat back, still aiming her gun at the vigilante. “So, I have to know. How did you figure it out? I’m guessing you already knew before I threatened to shoot you.”

“I made sure to get a good look at _le Chat Emeraude_ when you asked me to check that the storage room was secure. The left ear was completely missing. Most people think that’s the case, but actually only part of it is missing. So I knew it was a fake."

“You _have_ done your research, haven’t you?” the Cat drawled. “But that could have just meant that Travers was selling a phony statue.”

“On its own, yes. But you made your alias just as smart as you are. I knew that Travers would have made the fake more accurate than that if she’d just been intending to con someone into giving up their money for it at the auction, so when the statue disappeared I was sure it hadn’t been stolen. You just wanted people to _think_ it had.”

“And use the distraction to make off with their money,” the Cat summarised. “Looks like your private eye façade wasn’t a complete lie. But how did any of that tell you that Travers was me all along?”

“I couldn’t be sure, only presume. But up until recently the burglaries had no theme linking them together, just the amount of skill required and some of the tricks used. Then you started stealing cat-related items specifically. That seemed strange to me, but it’s like I said: you’re smart. The idea that you started stealing cat-themed items specifically to make people worry about le Chat Emeraude being stolen wasn’t exactly far-fetched. My suspicions were confirmed once I talked to the twins.”

“So you solved the mystery. I suppose congratulations are in order, but then again… the thief _did_ go free at the end.”

The Bat raised an eyebrow. “You _do_ realise I wouldn’t just let you escape?”

The Cat scoffed. “You _would_. I’ve got an ace up my sleeve.” She nodded towards her gun to make sure the Bat knew what she meant.

“The safety’s on,” the Bat said. “It’s how you’ve been able to keep your finger on the trigger this whole time without accidentally firing it. I can take that gun from you before you can take the safety off, take aim and fire.”

“Not what I meant. Think back, Bats.”

The Bat did, and realisation dawned on him. “You handed me the gun. You never showed it to anyone else, never handled it without your gloves on, but you handed it to me so my fingerprints would be on it.”

“Not smoking yet, but it _is_ a gun. Then there’s the footage showing _you_ running around the yacht the night the statue was last seen. It wouldn’t take much effort to make it look like you’re the thief and I’m your hostage, and even if you wore fake prints, you’d risk losing one of your aliases.”

“Well played, Cat,” the Bat said. As much as he wanted to bring the criminal to justice, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do so without losing a valuable alias. He looked at the city skyline on the horizon. “We’ve still got a while before we reach land. I answered your question, how about you return the favour?”

The Cat shrugged. “Ask away.”

“Why these people? You could have invited anyone to the auction, so why did you choose them?”

“Because they’re monsters.”

“That’s harsh.”

“You clearly don’t know what they’ve done,” she said. “Pegg’s the one who had Skirley Apartments built, and the one who had them cut corners. And when the tenants got sick because living there _poisoned_ them, do you know what happened? They ended up at Sacred Heart Hospital. Which Pegg owns. After what they had to pay for their treatments, they couldn’t pay the rent and they got evicted. Wallace is the doctor she paid to cover up any wrongdoing. Earle’s had Wayne Enterprises testing chemical weapons in Corto Maltese, on _civilian populations_. Do I need to go on?”

Bruce was shocked. He’d known that the world of privilege was full of criminals, but this? And some of these people had been _friends of his parents_. “No. You don’t.” He decided to change the subject. “What are you going to do with the money?”

“Divide it up. Try to help some of the people who suffered because of Pegg and Earle and Sionis. You’ve been getting rid of the people keeping the innocent down, but somebody still needs to help them pick themselves up.”

Bruce considered that. He had the power to do that, to help people pick themselves up. Why hadn’t he been using it?

“Your motives are noble, but I don’t agree with your methods.”

“I’m not doing this to earn your approval. I don’t care what _anyone_ thinks of me.”

The boat hit the beach with a thump. Bruce turned off the engine. “There’s a tracking device in my jacket. Soon enough, backup’s going to arrive. I’d say you’ve got about a minute.”

The Cat nodded, picking up the case with the money in it. “See you around, Bats.” And then she was gone.

A minute later, Alfred showed driving the car. He pulled over when he saw Bruce, in disguise, holding out his hand with his thumb up. He opened the door and Bruce got in.

“So, where’s the thief?”

“She got away,” Bruce replied.

“Oh, bloody hell,” Alfred sighed.

“What?”

“I know that tone. If I recall correctly, you did _not_ decide to start doing this so you can go off gallivanting with femme fatales.”

“Alfred!”

“You didn’t say I’m wrong,” the butler smirked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, that is a Doctor Who reference you see there.  
> Also, there's a little bit of foreshadowing for one of the story arcs in the sequel here. AND it doubles as the start of Bruce's character arc.


	12. Chapter Twelve

Selina Kyle knelt in front of a locked safe with a combination dial. That was fortunate, a keypad would be much harder to crack without knowing the combination beforehand. She pressed her ear to the safe to listen to the tumblers clicking as she twisted the dial.

“See, that’s the thing about being a thief,” she said to the unconscious guard slumped against the wall next to her, “there’s a very diverse skill set involved. Psychology, engineering, computer programming, self-defence - as _you’ve_ just learned - and even finances, all of those are useful if you’re going to steal something. Right now, the skill I need is locksmithing - which _does_ fall under engineering - because it’s not enough to just listen to the clicking and figure out where the right numbers are.”

The dial continued to click.

“You need to figure out what order the numbers go in, which means you have to be able to feel the resistance from the lock and how it changes - and those changes tend to be hard to notice. And you need to know how the lock is put together.” Far to her left, a helical staircase led up through a hole in the ceiling and onto the roof.

“A locksmith, or just someone who _could_ be a locksmith if they put their mind to it, would be able to do all of that. Fortunately,” she said as she moved away from the safe, “I knew a few locksmiths back when I was living with carnies. You never know who you’ll meet at a carnival.” She pulled the handle and the door opened.

“Bingo. What do we have here?” Selina reached into a safe and took out a cotton bag embroidered with… “An _actual_ dollar sign. _God_ , rich people are weird.” She opened the bag, grinned at the money inside and reached into the safe again. “Now _this_ is even better,” she said, opening the small leather-bound book that was now in her hand. “ _Oh_ , I like what I’m seeing. Your boss has been making some interesting - and by that I mean _dirty_ \- financial transactions.”

Selina put the book into the bag, pulled it closed and slung it around her shoulder, then walked towards the stairs. She could have just taken the elevator down to the lobby, but she didn’t want to risk an encounter with the guards. When the was at the top of the staircase, she opened the door and stepped out onto the roof.

Across the street to her left, there was a building that was one storey lower than this one. Selina turned left, took a run up and leapt across the gap, turning the fall into a roll as she landed on the roof opposite and getting to her feet. She parkoured down to street level (a common alternative to putting up with traffic jams in Gotham), where a getaway car was already waiting for her.

=^*v*^=

“Damn, that’s a lot of money!” Holly exclaimed when she looked inside the bag.

“Don’t get too excited,” Selina said as she drove the car back to their penthouse (Holly _was_ three years too young to drive after all). “I’ll have to get the bills checked to make sure they’re not marked. If they are, then we’ll just have to distribute them as far and wide as we can.”

“So there’s a chance we did all of this for nothing.”

“No, we did all this for _that_ ,” Selina pointed at the book with her right hand.

“A book. We did this for one of Hammond Veranda’s _books_.”

“Look inside. It’s a record of money changing hands and there are people who’d be willing to pay a lot of money to know whose hands those are.”

Holly opened the book and scanned the pages. “ _Damn_. Isn’t that the corrupt politician who’s hiding in Qurac?”

“ _Yep_ ,” Selina said cheerfully. “If the feds get their hands on that, Veranda could find himself responsible for a diplomatic clusterf***.”

Holly grinned. “So there’d be a lot of people willing to pay millions for this.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

=^*v*^=

“What do you think, Phoenix?” Selina asked. She’d taken off her disguise - the blond wig, the make-up that lightened her skin tone slightly, the coloured contact lenses and the facial prosthetics - and the dark-skinned Latina with curly black hair and piercing green eyes was completely unrecognizable from the tan straight-haired blonde who’d walked into Muse Tower, more commonly known as the Veranda Building.

“I told you not to call me that,” Arizona Davis reminded her roommate. “And you have nothing to worry about. The money’s genuine and, as far as I can tell, it’s not marked.”

“ _None_ of the bills?”

“I _am_ thorough, you know. And I commit financial fraud for a living. If there’s one thing I know, it’s money.”

“Great. Tomorrow, I’ll copy out the book and bring the copies to Gwen, then we’ll divide the profits.”

“By the way, have you read the Gotham Gazette recently?”

“No,” Selina scoffed. “Why? Is some married billionaire having an affair with a model half their age?”

Arizona laughed. “Nah, it doesn’t look like they’re going to be running _those_ stories anymore. They’re making a comeback with an article about some vigilante in the East End. Front page stuff: check it out.” She tossed the newspaper to her friend.

“’The Bat of the East End’,” Selina read. “Seriously? The sixties called, they want their animal-themed superheroes back.”

“This guy’s not exactly super. Neither was Racoon Man, back when he was around.”

“Anyone who carries around shark repellent is super _something_ ,” Selina said. She sat down in her armchair to read the rest of the article. “Vale. I _swear_ I know those names from somewhere.”

=^*v*^=

Two days later, Selina had sold Veranda’s book to Gwen Altamont, her fence. She’d made a copy so she could check it for any rich people who needed to be Robin Hooded.

The next morning, she looked up Vicky Vale and found out how she knew her names: she’d been fired from the Gotham Globe for looking into a story that William Earle, CEO of Wayne Enterprises, didn’t want published. Selina made a mental note to look into both of that and see who, other than Earle, needed to be given the ‘steal from the rich, give to the poor’ treatment.

She’d keep a lioness’s share for herself, of course. No point in passing up luxury.

=^*v*^=

“ _Killing in the name of._ ”

You couldn’t grow up on the streets in Gotham without learning about the Flea.

_“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.”_

‘A mall for street kids, but with better music’ is what they called it, but that was only part of the truth. The Flea was a place to get information, sell or buy drugs, and find out about ‘job openings’.

_“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.”_

Selina had come back here for the last reason. Professional thieves liked to come back here to find out if there was anyone who’d offered to pay for a particular item that they couldn’t obtain legally.

_“Huh!”_

She’d left satisfied: some old rich white guy (which narrowed the clientele down to like ninety percent of rich guys) wanted something valuable that he couldn’t acquire legally. Selina saw dollar signs and gave her contact the number for one of her burner phones.

_“And now you do what they told ya. And now you do what they told ya. But now you do what they told ya. Well now you do what they told ya.”_

That was the other thing keeping her coming back to this place: Rage Against the Machine.

=^*v*^=

The disposable phone buzzed. Selina picked up the call. She’d already plugged the phone into her computer and opened a voice distortion program.

“Talk,” she said.

On the other end of the line, an old man said “I was told you could steal something for me.”

“That depends. How much will you be willing to pay for it?”

“A quarter of a million dollars. Is that high enough?”

“What do you want stolen?”

“There’s a flash drive with some valuable information that I’d like to acquire. It’s being kept at an IT company called AbboTech for another nine days, but after that a buyer will retrieve it. I _want_ that drive.”

“You say I have nine days?”

“That is correct. Once you have the information, call this number again and I’ll tell you where to bring the drive.”

“I’ll do it in three,” Selina said before hanging up.

At the other end of the line, William Earle put the phone down and sat back in the back of his limousine.

=^*v*^=

The first thing Selina did after the call was to Google the company that the client had mentioned. She’d tried several different spellings (“why can’t these small-scale corporations have names that are _easy_ to spell? Why do they have to be so pretentious?”) until she found the right one.

AbboTech, she found, was an IT company founded by Jean Abbot. The company’s mission statement was “Innovation. Inspiration. Communication.” (“Motivation. Exasperation,” Holly added when she heard it.) Being a Gotham-based company, there were a few scandals involving them, the most recent of which was involved confidential information being sold to corporations and individuals.

Aside from that, she’d also tracked down the client’s number and figured out that he was William Earle, CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Which made Selina wonder what information he was trying to obtain – or hide - and whether it had anything to do with whatever story Vale tried to run that Earle had covered up.

=^*v*^=

AbboTech’s headquarters looked like God had ripped a building out of Silicon Valley and smashed it into the deteriorating industrial area of Gotham. A sterile interior with a copious amount of glass, and walls covered in garishly coloured squares. Wide, flat screens were suspended from the walls, showing the same commercial over and over again.

“Why would they show a commercial for AbboTech if everyone here is already _at_ AbboTech?” Holly wondered.

“Because it’s corporate propaganda,” Selina replied. “The Party doesn’t stay in power by putting _less_ of their rhetoric in its Ministries, does it?”

They stopped at a seemingly random spot and Selina held her camera phone out in front of themselves and took a selfie.

“You realise I didn’t get that reference at all, right?” Holly said.

“You _really_ need to read some Orwell,” Selina told the teenager.

=^*v*^=

Selina whooped.

“What is it?” Holly asked.

“See this?” Selina zoomed in on the camera in one of the photographs they’d taken. “Judging by the font on that serial number on the side of the camera, the security for this place was done by MaxiSafe. That’s a good thing, because if their security measures were food, they’d be Valu Time Luncheon Loaf.”

“Isn’t that off-brand spam?”

“Exactly. What would be more difficult is getting past the guards.”

“You could wait until nightfall and get in through the vent,” Holly suggested.

Selina started laughing. She kept laughing for almost two full minutes before she managed to catch her breath. “No. That only works in the movies: at night, if you’re in the building and you’re not a guard, you’re a trespasser; you don’t have a crowd to hide in either; and while a human being _can_ fit inside one of those vents, it would make a hell of a lot of noise.”

“So what’s the plan?” Holly asked.

=^*v*^=

 _‘The Thirty-Six Stratagems’_ was a Chinese essay detailing (surprisingly) thirty-six stratagems to use in various situations, including war and politics. There are six chapters, each of which contains six stratagems. The final stratagem of the first chapter – _‘Winning Stratagems_ ’ – is ‘ _Shēng dōng jī xī’, or ‘_ Make a sound in the East, then strike in the West’. This referred to distracting the enemy by use of a feint.

That stratagem could just as easily be applied to breaking into a corporate building.

A red-haired woman with a fake tan bumped into one of a group of guards standing near an indoor café. She apologised and walked on. The guards, armed with tasers and wearing blue uniforms, were relaxing with their coffees and donuts (I kid you not) when they heard a commotion at the doors. It appeared that two of the guards were trying to restrain a protester, trying being the operative word: she’d already broken one of their noses. The remaining guards decided to provide backup, which only made the commotion worse.

Nobody noticed Selina Kyle - disguised by a red wig, make-up that resembled a fake tan, and blue contact lenses – pick the lock to a set of doors marked ‘RESTRICTED ACCESS: EMPLOYEES ONLY’, open the doors, step into the corridor and lock the doors behind her.

=^*v*^=

Selina had already hacked into the building’s Wi-Fi, and was now using her access to mess with the security cameras: her phone warned her when she was approaching one, then either turn off the camera for a few seconds or simply make it repeat the last two seconds of footage. (Valu Time Luncheon Loaf, plain and simple.)

She’d checked the floor plan hanging in a frame on one of the walls and was now headed to a room that had been marked ‘secure storage’. As she walked, Selina made a mental note to thank Arizona for agreeing to provide a distraction as soon as she bailed her out of jail.

=^*v*^=

The lock on the door to secure storage was electronic and required a keycard. Fortunately, Selina had anticipated something like this and stolen a keycard from one of the guards she’d bumped into. The pale wooden door opened and Selina entered secure storage.

The room wasn’t much to look at: thankfully, no attempt at decorating had been made here; the lighting was cold and blue (and _harmful_ , those wavelengths were the ones that made screens so bad for people’s health) and the overhead fan slowly rotated, keeping the temperature slightly lower than what one would expect.

There was a row of shelves, protected by a glass door with an analogue lock. Selina picked that lock and the glass door slid into a slit in the wall, allowing her to take a padlocked steel box off the shelf. That box was one of many, but it was labelled with a date - seven days from now.

The date Earle had said the drive would be gone by.

Selina picked the lock on the box and lifted the lid. A flash drive lay in a depression in a spongy layer of padding. She took the drive out, closed the box and locked it again, then put it back on the shelf and slid the door back across. The lock on the glass door clicked. Once the left secure storage, there would be no sign she’d been there, not even a fingerprint since she’d taken care to wear gloves.

=^*v*^=

Getting out of the building was easy: follow the floor plan to the employee exit – avoiding any actual employees by hiding behind corners (not in the janitor’s closet, there might be an actual janitor), then step out the gates and into the car park to the side of the building. The getaway car was already waiting for her.

“So,” Holly asked as Selina drove, “what do you think about this Bat Vigilante Dude?”

“He’s a deluded idealist who thinks he can make a difference. Next question?”

“You know, he _has_ already taken down the Red Hood Gang. And crime’s apparently already down in the East End thanks to him.”

“Seriously?” Selina said. “Huh. Okay, he’s a deluded idealist who happens to be right about being able to make a difference.”

“And he seems to care more about justice than _the law_ ,” Holly said, doing an impression of Sylvester Stallone when she said the last two words, “he’s giving kids leeway even _if_ they’ve already committed the crime.”

“We’re not going to team up with somebody who dresses up as an animal, Holly.”

“I think the animal thing he’s got going is kind of…” she took a pair of headphones out of the glove compartment, “bat-ass.”

Selina rolled her eyes at the joke.

=^*v*^=

Selina uploaded the data on the drive to her computer and cracked the security measures. She figured she at least deserved to know what was on it.

“ _Oh_ ,” she said. “ _This_ is interesting.”

“What?” Holly asked, curious.

“Turns out Mr Earle wanted us to steal some information connecting some enterprising old socialite called Mrs Pegg to the Skirley Apartments disaster. It appears she owned the housing complex…” Selina trailed off, reading the rest of the data. “And the hospital all those people ended up in. The whole thing was a money-making scheme on her part,” Selina concluded, rage seeping into her voice, “and she paid to silence the people who knew.”

“So what was AbboTech doing holding the drive?” Arizona wondered.

“Maybe Pegg paid them to find the drive and hand it over to her so she could destroy it,” Selina suggested. “Or maybe they were holding it for someone who wanted to release the data to the public. Either way, I doubt Earle is after it out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Maybe we could send a copy of the drive to Vale,” Holly suggested. “Earle _was_ the one who cost Vale her job at the Globe; maybe we can convince her to tell us why in exchange for the Skirley Apartments stuff.”

At that moment, the disposable phone buzzed again. Selina turned the voice distortion back on and answered the call.

“Do you _have_ it?” Earle asked, irritated.

“I do, yes,” Selina replied, “but I wonder why you want it so much. Leverage, maybe?”

“You guess correctly,” Earle confirmed. “Now just bring it to the warehouse at 15th and Hauer-“

“Hold that thought,” Selina interrupted. “The money comes first. A quarter of a million… bit cheap, for a man like you. CEO of _Wayne Enterprises_ and all that.”

Earle hesitated.

“Fine,” he said at last. “What do you want? One million? Two?”

“Five,” Selina said. “Bring it to that warehouse of yours and I’ll have the drive sent to your office. We do this on my terms.”

“I could have you _killed_ for this.”

“Be careful, Earle. I’m recording this call.”

=^*v*^=

She got the five million she wanted.

After that, it didn’t take long for Selina to come up with a plan. She and Holly had sent a copy of the drive to Vale, who’d told them that she’d been fired for looking into chemical weapons testing in Corto Maltese – apparently, dozens of civilians had shown symptoms of poisoning by the weapons in question – while Arizona looked into the Skirley Apartments scandal.

The way Selina saw it, she now had three birds to kill: Robin Hooding Earle, doing the same to Pegg and the doctor who’d acted as her accomplice, and finding out just what the Bat’s agenda was (and the risk he posed to Selina in her line of work). And she was pretty sure she could kill them all with one, animal-themed, stone. She just needed to get in contact with somebody who could forge statues and then the plan would be underway.


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Rio de Janeiro, Brazil**

**Five Years Ago**

“ _So, what now?_ ” asked Gael.

It had been a day since they’d defeated Ferreiro and the residents of the favela were celebrating. But Bruce and Maestre had both chosen to skip the celebrations and Gael had followed them.

“ _I’m going to go after the mercenary who killed Ferreiro,_ ” Bruce said.

“ _Henri Ducard_.” Both boys looked at Maestre. “ _I’ve heard of him. He was in the Algerian army. Twenty years ago, he disappeared, and resurfaced as a soldier for hire. What will you do when you find him?_ ”

“ _I don’t know yet,_ ” Bruce said. “ _There’s a lot I can learn from someone like Ducard. I might convince him to make me his protégé.”_

“ _Then you’d better leave soon, if you don’t want to lose him._ ”

“ _Don’t leave just yet,_ ” Gael interjected. _“We really started something, taking down Ferreiro's organisation. You should come celebrate. Both of you._ ”

Bruce thought about the offer. “ _It wouldn’t hurt to enjoy a victory once in a while,_ ” he accepted at last.

**Gotham City, USA**

**The Present Day**

“You want… me… to be Commissioner?”

“I’ve had people figuring this out for weeks,” the Mayor said, “and it’s what they came back with: you’re the best choice for the job.”

“Isn’t there anyone else?”

“There is. But right now, Gotham needs a Commissioner who is not only honest, but also tenacious, driven, decisive, wise and strong. And there aren’t many people who can be called all of those things.”

“In that case, I suppose I accept.”

“Congratulations, Captain Essen,” the Mayor said. “Once the paperwork is done, you’ll be the new Commissioner of the Gotham City Police Department.”

/\\-^|^-/\

In the Iceberg Lounge and Casino, Matches Malone was playing pool with Loose Lips Leblanc. Only the black ball was left on the table, and it was Malone’s move.

“Aaand I win,” Malone said as he potted the black ball, clearing the table.

“Lucky bastard,” Leblanc complained.

“Lucky? I can’t even get a job these days. Two run-ins with the Bat on two consecutive jobs is a career-ender.”

“Hey, sooner or later there’ll be someone desperate enough to hire you again. _I_ got my groove back a few days ago,” Leblanc bragged.

“Seriously?” Malone asked. “ _You_?” It was well known that Ricky ‘Loose Lips’ Leblanc had been blacklisted after spilling too many beans to the cops (just because they’re on the same payroll doesn’t mean cops and robbers get to be friends). That was how he’d gotten his nickname and ended up stealing TVs from apartments.

“Yeah, get this: I’ve been hired by Howard Branden. Apparently he’s putting the Red Hood Gang back together as part of a plan to get revenge against Essen.”

“The Red Hoods? Their lieutenants are all either in prison or in _the ground_. Who’s left for Branden to put back together? Some punk-ass drug dealers?”

“Don’t insult the punk-asses, Matches. You might end up paying one of them rent.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Mr Finch, you’ve been largely inactive district attorney since you took office. Now you’re pushing for a tougher approach towards organised crime?”

“That’s right, Jeff,” Carl Finch said to the talk show host. He’d been invited onto ‘Gotham by Stagelight’ and graciously accepted. “Organised crime is a poison that’s rotting this city to the core, and I refuse to remain idle and allow it to go on unimpeded.”

“What was it that brought on this change of pace?” Jeff Black asked.

“I used to believe that trying to fight men like Loeb, Falcone, or Maroni was hopeless. That anyone who tried was doomed to lose. Recently, my eyes were opened and I saw that I was wrong. Now I believe in justice, and I believe in Gotham City.”

/\\-^|^-/\

There are only really a handful of things one might say after going outside for a smoke and waking up tied to a chair with a burlap sack over their head. These include ‘let me go’, ‘who do you think you are?’, ‘I have money, I can pay you’, and ‘this is the weirdest birthday party I’ve had since that time that Bob got high and stole an alpaca from the zoo’.

However, Lotus did not say any of these things. Instead, he said “Oh _come on_ , I just got out on parole!” He’d gotten a light sentence by being smart enough to get arrested before the Triumvirate Scandal. At least that was how he put it: everybody else just said he’d been dumb enough to get caught when there was still corruption everywhere.

A voice screamed in Lotus’ ear, “What’s Branden planning!?”

“ _You again?_ ”

“Yes,” the Bat of the East End growled. “Me. Are you going to talk, or are you going to push your luck?”

Lotus remembered the last time he’d been in a situation like this. When he tried, the Bat could be absolutely terrifying. So he made the smart choice and talked as fast as he could without tripping over the words. “Branden’s got an informant on the force, someone who managed to stay under the radar. I don’t know who they are, but they told Branden that Essen’s going to be the new Commissioner and she’ll be giving a speech in front of the precinct the day after it’s done. Branden’s going to go into one of the abandoned buildings across the street and shoot her.”

/\\-^|^-/\

The trial of Gotham City v. Gillian Loeb had gone on for weeks. Paperwork was swapped back and forth between the prosecuting lawyers – the DA’s office – and the defending lawyers – a small law firm whose liquor cabinet was bigger and fuller than their filing cabinet. Now the day of the actual trial had come: if Loeb was found guilty (though despite all advice he continued to plead _not_ guilty) for the various charges of corruption, fraud, murder, and other crimes, he would be sentenced to life in prison.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” Judge Leavers asked.

“We have, your honour. For the charge of obstruction of justice: guilty. For the charge of first-degree murder: guilty. For the charge of fraud: guilty. And, for the charge of false testimony: guilty.”

/\\-^|^-/\

On the map of downtown Gotham, the GCPD precinct had been circled and the abandoned buildings on the opposite side of the same street had been marked with X’s. “There are seven abandoned buildings on Justice Street that are _opposite_ the precinct,” Bruce said. It occurred to him that the homelessness epidemic was a direct result of the same high housing prices – and high rents – that resulted in so many abandoned buildings in the _good_ part of town. Someone had to do something about that.

“We can narrow it down further,” Alfred said. “These three,” he pointed to crosses at the east and west ends of the street, “are too far away, there’s no chance of a clear shot from that angle. That leaves four.”

“Yeah, but one’s structurally unstable,” Blake said. “And two don’t have a clear line of sight: the oak trees in front of the precinct would block the view.”

“Which leaves us with one,” Bruce concluded. “That’s where Branden will be.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Good morning, Ray,” the nice lady said.

“Good mornin’, ma’am,” Ray replied, sitting down on the couch.

The nice lady was on the other side of a window. Ray had asked about that in one of their appointments and she’d said that the window was there because sometimes some of the guests got angry.

“Have you been taking your medication, Ray?” she asked.

“Yessum,” he said. Amanda had asked these people to help him, so he knew the pills must be doing something good.

“Good. Now, tell me some more about Amanda.”

/\\-^|^-/\

Lucas Burr had enjoyed being part of the GCPD’s SWAT team. But all good things must come to an end, and so they did: it turned out that police brutality was _not_ in fact supposed to be condoned by the rest of the force. Commissioner Loeb had been put away and crossed several corrupt judges to get a lighter sentence, and it was hard-working cops free from principles, like Burr, who got the worst of it. Now he found himself out of a job and many of his work buddies were facing prison sentences.

So when Branden came to him and asked for his help in getting revenge on the witch who’d replaced Loeb, he couldn’t accept faster.

Branden had asked him and a few other cops to keep watch while he set up his sniper rifle and shot Commissioner Essen. So Burr was keeping watch, shotgun at the ready, keeping his fingers crossed that he’d get to pump some troublemaker full of lead.

Something glinted in the shadows of the alley. Something black, but shiny - like metal. Something that almost looked like…

“Holy sh**, it’s a bat!” Burr screamed as he fired off a shot at the shape.

It didn’t do anything, and in the time it took him to cock his gun and level it again, the Bat was on him. Burr took a fist to the diaphragm, an elbow to the face, and another fist to the temple, then collapsed to the ground. His head swam and his lungs gasped for breath.

Somebody yelled. The Bat turned to find another ex-cop charging towards him with a knife. He raised an arm and the fins on his glove, which formed the shape of a bat’s wing, caught the blade.

The knife was stuck between two of the fins, cutting into the fabric between them, and the Bat wrenched it out of the cop’s hand then shoved him into the alley wall, slamming the same gloved hand into the cop’s gut. The fins bent so as to not cause serious injury to the Bat’s opponent. The Bat blocked a punch with his other arm and slammed his elbow into the pinned opponent’s face. The man’s nose cracked and when the Bat stepped back, he fell to the ground.

The Bat opened the door to the abandoned building and stepped inside.

/\\-^!^-/\

Gordon, standing to Essen’s left, sensed that something was wrong. Slowly, he turned his head as Essen continued talking.

Across the street, on the top floor of an abandoned building, Howard Branden was holding a sniper rifle. He’d stapled black curtains onto the window frame to obscure his activities, and was taking aim at the Commissioner.

“Boss,” one of his henchmen said in a panicked voice, as he ran into the room, “the Bat’s here.”

“You guys can handle him,” Branden said. “We almost got him last time.”

“He’s already taken out most of us, boss!”

“So you’re telling me that the Bat’s already taken out most of my men, and your response is to leave your station to tell me this? Go back there and do your job, and put this maniac six feet under.”

Unfortunately, Branden’s subordinate never _got_ the chance to get back to his station, because an exploding stun grenade incapacitated him. The Bat burst into the room.

“Put the gun away, Branden,” he growled, “or I’ll make sure you’ll regret it.”

Branden fired anyway.

Across the street, Gordon lunged towards Essen, pushing her out of the bullet’s path. Essen took out her pistol, took aim at the window the shot had come from - she could see the tip of the rifle’s barrel - and fired.

Branden’s head exploded.

/\\-^|^-/\

There were only a handful of crooks left over from the investigation that followed Branden’s attempt on Essen’s life. Seven crooks, to be precise. The Red Hood Gang, however, planned to keep going.

“We still control Scurvytown,” Presley “Punch” Peterson argued. “We can use that to get back on top of the drug trade.”

“We’ve got the Amusement Mile too,” his sister, Jen “Judy” Jeffers added, “so we’re practically golden.”

The Amusement Mile, once famous for the entertainment industry, was now famous for the trafficking: what better place to make a sinister trade than an abandoned amusement park, after all?

“Yeah, but we need more than just that,” a third gang member said. “We need money if we want to make something of the Red Hoods again.”

“Well, we know where to find the dough: just rob a bank!” Loose Lips suggested.

“If you can find one that’s not owned by the mob,” the other gang member replied, “because they’ll make sure the money is safe.” And then a shot rang out and he collapsed onto the table they were all sitting at. Sticking out of his back was a flag, and handwritten on the flag was the word ‘BANG!’

“Well, _shoot_ ,” a man standing in the doorway said. “I was going to say ‘ _I_ do the jokes around here’ and _then_ shoot him, but it looks like this gun has a hair trigger.” He walked into the room and into the light, revealing himself to be wearing a purple suit. His skin was the colour of chalk and his head was covered by a purple fedora. There was a smoking gun in his left hand.

The Red Hood Gang all trained their guns on the intruder, but he parted his jacket to show that he was wearing an explosive vest and had a dead man’s switch in his right hand. “Ah, let’s not…” he began. Then, when the gang began to lower their guns he rushed forwards, dropped the dead man’s switch, grabbed Leblanc by the shoulders, turned him around to face the others, and put a knife to Leblanc’s throat.

There was no explosion.

“… lose our heads about this,” the intruder finished. “You work for me now.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“Well, I think this warrants a celebration,” Alfred said, entering the room with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

“The Mission’s not done yet,” Bruce replied.

“Oh _bloody hell_.”

“So what’s next on the agenda?” asked John.

“What’s left of the Red Hoods is still a threat: Branden proved that. The drugs are still coming to the Docklands: I’ll have to send a message and make it clear that poison isn’t welcome in Gotham. And we still need to track down the Cat.”

“And there I was thinking you _fancied_ her,” Alfred said.

“I let her go because she’d have framed Rick Steward for the crime and I had no evidence linking her to those thefts,” Bruce claimed. “That’s not going to be the case next time.”

“Right.”

“There’s one more thing, something we should do as soon as I’m done sending that message to the cartels.”

“And that is?..” asked Alfred.

“Bruce Wayne is going to come back to Gotham.”

/\\-^|^-/\

“ _Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste.”_

“Hey, Bert,” Vitti said to his driver, “turn that off will you?”

 _“I’ve been around for a long, long year, stole many a man’s soul and faith._ ”

Suddenly, Vitti felt a cold ring of metal pressed against the back of his head: the muzzle of a gun.

“ _I was round when Jesus Christ had his moment of doubt and pain._ ”

“Don Falcone sends his regards,” someone behind Vitti said.

“ _Made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate._ ”

There was a flash and a bang and Vitti’s brain coated the glass partition between them and the driver.

“ _Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name._ _But what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we're done.  
> Well, not quite. The next installment will be a shorter story - about half the length of this one - followed by a much longer one. The second one will carry on the plot threads left hanging here. The first one may have repercussions down the line, but for the time being it will be mostly self-contained.


End file.
